Writing to Congressman Jimmy Duncan, Amy Schnelle was able to convince the government to resume her benefits. On Thursday, September 11, 2008, Judge William Alsup of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted class certification in a disability rights action in which plaintiffs argue that the Social Security Administration (SSA) fails to provide its communications in alternative formats that would enable people with visual impairments to have equal access to SSA programs as required by federal disability civil rights laws and the U.S. Constitution.
This study uses SSA Social Security Administration administrative data linked with National Health Interview Survey data (NHIS) to examine health status, labor force participation at time of NHIS interview, and linked mortality data to examine mortality during the period following NHIS interview.
By way of background, when a request for a hearing is received at a local Social Security office, it is automatically propagated to our computer system by a case intake employee in ODAR who adds ODAR-specific coding such as ALJ assignment, site of the hearing and the representative involved.
For example, if the disability that a person is suffering from did not occur as a result of service-related activities, but falls under the Social Security impairment guidelines, that veteran may indeed be able to qualify for Social Security Disability benefits if the extent of their disability can be proven, even though they can not qualify for VA benefits due to the nature of the disability.
But according to the 2016 annual report from the Social Security Board of Trustees on the financial status of the program, without policy changes, the combined Social Security trust funds will begin declining in 2020 until reserves become depleted in 2034.