I am a disabled veteran awarded 100% disability after the Veterans Administration (VA) has determined that due to my disabilities I am unemployable. Looking at me you would wonder what my disability is, but believe me, the VA just didn’t simply come to this conclusion. To determine whether I was employable or not I had to participate in an extensive work assessment conducted by the VA. It was upon this work assessment that the VA determined that I was unemployable due to my disabilities.
The VA directed me to apply for Social Security Disability. I applied figuring I would receive Social Security Disability without any hassle. I figured wrong because the Social Security Administration (SSA) denied me disability benefits citing that I was employable after I had a less than 10-minute answer and question session with the doctor the SSA sent me to. No physical examination, no tests of any kind, nothing. So the SSA ignored my VA medical records consisting of more than 20-years of documentation and took the word of a doctor who spent less than 10-minutes asking me questions to determine whether I was disabled or not.
I got this straight from the SSA website…
“The definition of disability under Social Security is different than other programs. Social Security pays only for total disability. No benefits are payable for partial disability or for short-term disability.
“Disability” under Social Security is based on your inability to work. We consider you disabled under Social Security rules if:
You cannot do work that you did before; We decide that you cannot adjust to other work because of your medical condition(s); and Your disability has lasted or is expected to last for at least one year or to result in death.”
These are the same criteria the VA follows when determining whether you can work or not due to your medical conditions. Again, the VA found that because of my medical conditions I am unemployable. So my question is how is it that the VA, a government department can find me unemployable while the SSA a government department disagrees saying I am employable while both have the same guidelines when determining whether a person is or is not employable due to their medical conditions? This is why the VA told me to apply for Social Security Disability because they said I should automatically get it.
My VA representative did not understand why the SSA denied me benefits and told me to get a lawyer to fight the SSA. I chose Binder and Binder to represent me, but hindsight always being 20/20 I now wish I would have gone with a local law firm. Even having Binder and Binder representing me I was still denied benefits by the SSA. All I will say is if you are fighting the SSA for disability and you are contemplating on getting a lawyer, do not retain Binder or Binder or any other nationalized advertised law firm. Instead retain a law firm that is local to you so that you can deal with them directly rather than by phone or mail.
The bottom line is that I do not see how one government department can disagree with another government department. If the VA finds that a veteran is unemployable due to his or her medical conditions then the SSA should automatically award the veteran disability when he or she applies without any question.
Because of the SSA rules, I no longer qualify for Social Security Disability because I do not have enough credits to qualify for Social Security Disability. The purpose of my writing this article is to raise awareness of the injustice that takes place against disabled veterans that maybe our government will address this problem. Hopefully this article will go viral and it will open the eyes of our government. So spread the word and share this article with your friends.