Quote:
Originally Posted by St George 2013
My understanding is that Congresspeople and other elected officials work on cases like mine everyday. I had to sign a release for them so they did see my records. I couldn't even get my caseworker to call me back until I got them involved.
I have severe small fiber neuropathy from diabetes/chemo treatments. My skin biopsy showed results of 0.06 and 0.0 for the 2 punches I had.....that labs scales are from 0 to 15. I have zero A and C fibers left in both feet.
I had the following:
Biopsy report
Letters from my immediate family and former co-workers
A letter from my GYN of 25 years (no other dr would write a letter for me)
Office notes from PCP, onco, foot and ankle dr and neuro
And that's about it except for the forms SS required be filled out.
I decided to explain the above to you in hopes that it might help someone else.
Why would you not use any means available to get assistance ? I didn't want this to happen to me......I just went thru a year of pure hell to come out on the other side with a condition that I will have for the rest of my life. I was the Assistant Director of a Claims Dept that I actually created for 26 years. And making very good money. I was laid off, a month later a hysterectomy, 2 weeks after that I found out I had a rare uterine cancer and the chemo (taxol/carbo) treatments started in Dec and ended this past March.....exactly a month later I could not walk and my journey began to find out what was wrong with me.
I hope I've explained myself adequately enough for you. No bribes were given, nothing shady going on.
I would suggest that anyone that is having trouble with their disability claim get their local Congressman involved.
Debi from Georgia
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It is the Congressperson who votes for the legislation that determines how SSA makes disability decisions. They also vote for or against the funding determines how much staff SSA has and the amount of staffing also determines how quickly work gets done. If SSA is not as responsive to you as you would like, a very big reason is that the employees are overwhelmed with work and are always playing catchup and never catch up. If your Congressperson truly cared about that, they would provide the funding necessary for SSA to perform the job that SSA is tasked to do. There wouldn't be a long history of hiring freezes and reduced staffing and budget cuts.
My guess that in your case it was the evidence that determined that outcome of your case. And I think your condition must be obviously severe in order to get a favorable decision at the reconsideration level and that the favorable finding had pretty much nothing to do with the Congressperson's involvement.
I do believe that nothing shady happened between you and the Congressperson and between the Congressperson and SSA, but what I don't understand is what role that you believe a Congressperson played in your case and what role should they play in the rest of their constituents' cases? I think SSA takes too long to make decisions, and the hearing backlog is harmful to applicants, but if SSA is going to follow law and policy with their reduced staffs (expected to do more with less) then the backlogs will not go away.
There are some cases that get priority handling and get moved to the front of the line. And I think there are times when that is needed. But if everyone's case was flagged as priority handling because a Congressperson is involved, then no one is special.