I had my disability determination hearing today. As I was leaving, I was told that I should expect a ruling within... six months.

Everyone I've told about that in person today has responded, "What the fuck?!" but in the moment all I said was, "... oh."

For the record, I originally applied in January.

Of 2022.

--G.
welp, I guess it's time to sell my remaining possessions
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

"I can feel the gears of bureaucracy grinding me up already..."

"Like grist in the mill, honey. Good luck."

On the one hand, I have some sympathy for the workings of the bureaucrats as my wife works in an office doing determination for similar governmental assistance things, and the people running the show continually cut staffing to the bone, which is why they're always behind.

On the other hand, the worst they've ever been is 6 months behind, at which point management went "all hands on deck, everybody's on overtime until you un-fuck this mess!", so it would be nice if Maine would do the same.

Either way, a major gut-punch to hear that, and my condolences you're going through it.

"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>On the other hand, the worst they've ever been is 6 months behind, at
>which point management went "all hands on deck, everybody's on
>overtime until you un-fuck this mess!", so it would be nice if Maine
>would do the same.

Just as a note, this isn't a Maine thing, it's a federal government thing; and far from unfucking it, there are those in the halls of power who seem perpetually hellbent on making it worse. They're scared to death that if they're not constantly vigilant, they might accidentally help somebody. The very idea keeps them awake at night.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

I'm definitely aware that it's problem from the federal level on down, I just didn't want to broach the Dreaded P-Word first. That being said, I live in the Land of Corn and Assholes (specifically, Iowa), and our governor is on the "mortal fear of helping people" spectrum, which is why I was surprised that Maine wouldn't even make the token effort to clean things up when our villains were willing to do so.

Also, I seem to really like making 1-sentence paragraphs.
"This is probably a stupid question, but . . ."

>Just as a note, this isn't a Maine thing, it's a federal government
>thing; and far from unfucking it, there are those in the halls of
>power who seem perpetually hellbent on making it worse. They're
>scared to death that if they're not constantly vigilant, they
>might accidentally help somebody. The very idea keeps them awake at
>night.

I don't think it's that, but they are concerned about how often the government has been burned by those claiming disabilities that don't have one fleecing the government. That has happened enough times that they see bad agents behind every claim and are over reacting a bit and have swung the opposite by being too difficult to work with. All in the hope that it eliminates all fraudulent claims.

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".

Fun fact: this is entirely false. "Fraudulent" disability claims pale into insignificance compared to the amount of people entitled to claim who elect not to for various reasons. It is a convenient narrative peddled to justify slashing benefits to vulnerable people. See also: "welfare queens".

---
"She's old, she's lame, she's barren too, // "She's not worth feed or hay, // "But I'll give her this," - he blew smoke at me - // "She was something in her day." -- Garnet Rogers, Small Victory

FiMFiction.net: we might accept blatant porn involving the cast of My Little Pony but as God is my witness we have standards.

>they are concerned about how often the
>government has been burned by those claiming disabilities that don't
>have one fleecing the government.
>

If they were really concerned about people taking money from the government that didn't deserve it, they wouldn't be concerned about the penny-ante grifters, they'd look at the ones taking large bites.

Peter Eng
--
Insert humorous comment here.

>If they were really concerned about people taking money from the
>government that didn't deserve it, they wouldn't be concerned about
>the penny-ante grifters, they'd look at the ones taking large bites.

Like, say, a bouncy one?

they go 'boeing, boeing'

--
Jen Dantes - Darth Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Dark Lady of Sith Tech Support.
"This may not be a good idea, but it's the only one I have."

Strictly going by the amount of money lost by the government, billionaires cheating on their taxes (or simply exploiting 'legal' loopholes they lobbied their political buddies to write into law) is a far larger issue than a few people exploiting a system designed to do the bare minimum to keep a person on their feet.

>Strictly going by the amount of money lost by the government,
>billionaires cheating on their taxes (or simply exploiting 'legal'
>loopholes they lobbied their political buddies to write into law) is a
>far larger issue than a few people exploiting a system designed to do
>the bare minimum to keep a person on their feet.

I feel this is the reason that A Particular Political Party Whose Name I Will Not Mention wants to continue gutting the IRS to make sure that they lack the personnel to audit the megarich and make them pay up.

In other notes if anyone has a Death Note I would like to meet up and do some writing, thank you.

It took my wife seven years, start to finish, to finally get disability approved. I don't say this in some competitive sense, I just mean that I feel your pain.

If you haven't already found one, there are disability lawyers who specialize in cutting through the BS. We engaged one and it sped things up considerably. We didn't get the lawyer until somewhere around year 5, which in hindsight was far too long for us to try to go it alone.

Part of my wife's problem was that what she suffers from is fairly rare and often misdiagnosed, and since even the quote-unquote normal ailments get the automatic denial-until-you-appeaase-us-by-appealing-repeatedly treatment, ones that are less common get sent to the special hell.

--sofaspud
--

As somebody on a VA disability, I feel your pain. And I can't help but think of this line, as read by Leonard Nimoy in Civilization 4.

"The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy."

(Originally by Oscar Wilde)

Hang in there and get a good lawyer is all I can recommend. It's what I had to do with SSDI. :^/

Michael C. Fortner
"Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".

...

... I can't even comment on this right now.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Sucks, man. I'm sorry for you.

LAST EDITED ON Jul-07-24 AT 03:54 PM (EDT)
 
A good percentage of SSDI applications get rejected initially. I had the same thing happened to me when I applied 13 years ago. I got a Disability law firm to represent me on appeal and the appeals judge approved it. I used Allsup, but you can go with whomever you wish. There are lots of companies out there who do this sort of thing.

Good luck with it.

Michael

McFortner
Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".

LAST EDITED ON Jul-07-24 AT 05:59 PM (EDT)
 
>A good percentage of SSDI applications get rejected initially. I had
>the same thing happened to me when I applied 13 years ago. I got a
>Disability law firm to represent me on appeal and the appeals judge
>approved it.

For the record, this was the third denial, in a chain running back to my original application 2½+ years ago, and came after a hearing two months ago in which I was represented by an attorney, and during which SSA's own "vocational expert" agreed on record with every point we made.

From here there's one more appeal, in which I can send the hearing judge's opinion back for a legal review, after which the only remaining recourse is to sue the federal government. But it doesn't seem right now like that really matters, since--as I'm sure the process is designed to ensure--I've all but bankrupted not only myself but also my mother trying to keep all the financial plates spinning while all this has been going on.

Naturally they dropped this denial notice in my email inbox on a Saturday morning, having somehow arranged to complete the final stage of the five-stage process in the one working day between July 3 (when they announced it was beginning and would take 15–30 days) and said Saturday, so I've just gotten to stew in it all weekend. Tomorrow morning I'll be calling my attorney's office to ask them to file the final appeal, for form's sake, and also to investigate filing for Actual Bankruptcy.

Even though that won't really help, since the vast bulk of my debts are not dischargeable by bankruptcy, because of course they're not. Also, I remember looking into it once before and discovering that it is paradoxically very expensive. But I'll ask anyway to maybe foster a sense of urgency.

Oh, did I mention that the attorney who represented me at the hearing has left the firm in the meantime? I only found that out a couple weeks ago, when I called to ask if they had heard anything. The new one they said will be picking up his case load never called me back. Maybe now I know why!

Also, I started my annual heat-related MS flareup last week, just in time for all this extra bullshit to land on me. I'm on my old pal oral prednisone and my glucose numbers are off the chain right now, and if I'm not showing significant improvement by tomorrow, my neurologist wants to talk IV roids. So that's great too!

I haven't told my mother about all this yet. I'm kind of afraid to. She's still recovering from having a heart valve replaced.

Basically, if you're all wondering why I don't seem to be very creatively active lately, it'll be because (gestures vaguely).

--G.
anyway thanks for letting me whine a bit
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Today, 13 months after the hearing determination against me, I received notification that the review board has remanded the case back to the administrative law judge(s) on the grounds that they found multiple legal errors in the July 2024 ruling of denial.

Naturally, the way the system works, this doesn't mean the ruling is overturned and I win; it means the case goes back to the admin law judge (hopefully not the same one...?) for further examination. Said judge will probably order a second hearing, but all the notification I got today says is that a judge will notify me as to what I have to do next. It doesn't say when this will happen. It might be another year. Who knows nowadays?

Oh yeah, I think I forgot/couldn't bear to get into this last summer, but remember how my attorney moved away and his replacement didn't get back to me for weeks? I finally called her, a day or two before the deadline to appeal the hearing ruling, to ask whether she had done so. She seemed annoyed and clearly had forgotten all about me, then gave me a testy and patronizing explanation that she hadn't automatically assumed all of my previous attorney's cases,* but was in the process of deciding which ones to take up, and thus she had "no ethical responsibility" (her phrase) to take on mine. Which she had decided (right at that moment, I'm pretty sure) not to do.

* you know, like someone assuming someone else's workload at any other kind of business would do?

So I filed the appeal on my own recognizance on the last possible day it could have been filed, and I don't have a lawyer any more. I asked the one attorney I more-or-less know personally (who isn't That Kind of Lawyer) if she knew anyone who did that kind of work, and she said she didn't personally, but recommended a firm in Portland. I called them, but they only do VA disability work, not SSDI cases for civilians. So that was a dead end.

TLDR: My SSA disability case is still alive, apparently, but given the rate at which this system works, does it matter in any practical terms? I don't know. Given the way things have been going lately, I suppose I should take any fragment of good news I get, however small and tenuous.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Mod
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
zgryphon at that email service Google has
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

>Oh yeah, I think I forgot/couldn't bear to get into this last summer,
>but remember how my attorney moved away and his replacement didn't get
>back to me for weeks? I finally called her, a day or two
>before the deadline to appeal the hearing ruling, to ask whether she
>had done so. She seemed annoyed and clearly had forgotten all about
>me, then gave me a testy and patronizing explanation that she hadn't
>automatically assumed all of my previous attorney's cases,* but
>was in the process of deciding which ones to take up, and thus
>she had "no ethical responsibility" (her phrase) to take on mine.
>Which she had decided (right at that moment, I'm pretty sure) not to
>do.

That sounds very much like something the bar association should be told about. It's hard to see how that happening doesn't involve someone having a failing in ethics or competency.

I used Allsup to represent me at the hearing and I got my disability. They're online and I believe they have lawyers everywhere. Right now I'm fighting the VA to get them to accept my Cancer (surgery last month and leg is still swollen) and heart problems (triple bypass almost a year ago) as being caused by chemicals I worked with (former) and the shot they gave me preparatory to going to the desert (latter) that I didn't need.

Good luck and I hope you win.

McFortner
Maxim 37: There is no such thing as "overkill".
There is only "open fire" and "I need to reload".