Disabled - Social Security Disability ?

I came across a page on a site that mainly seems to concern life insurance. However, some of the statistics regarding social security disability seemed interesting.

According to the site, about half of all disability claims filed with the social security administration between the years 1992 and 2001 were denied. Is this true?

Actually, the denial rates for social security disability really depend on a couple of factors.

One of those factors is the state you live in. Yes, social security disability is a federal program. However, despite this, denial rates differ dramatically between the various states. In general, the southern states of the U.S. tend to have rates of denial that are significantly higher than the rates of denial in the northeast. Why is this? No one has ever been able to "put the finger" on the reason why.

However, few would argue with the fact that a "culture of denial" exists in many of the state agencies that perform disability determinations for the social security administration (each state has at least one such agency, and usually these are called DDS, or disability determination services). And it is certainly not improbable that, in some states, this predisposition toward denying claims is stronger than in others.

Another factor that plays into denial rates is the level at which a claim is at. More than half of all social security disability claims that are heard by federal administrative law judges are approved, while approximately seventy percent of all initial disability applications are denied (meaning, of course, that if you are denied, you should appeal your case, with the goal of getting your case heard by a judge at a disability hearing).



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