2011-04-14-SSDI, SSI and You
Seminars@Hadley
SSDI, SSI & You
Presented by
Valerie Williams
Mandy Lomax
Moderated by
Billy Brookshire
April 14, 2011
Billy Brookshire
Welcome to Seminars@Hadley. Our topic today is SSDI, SSI & You, and I’ll let our presenters describe those things in more detail to you. Our presenters today are Valerie Williams, who is the Project Director and Community Work Incentives Coordinator with ARCIL, the Austin Resource Center for Independent Living, and Mandy Lomax, who is the Area Work Incentives Coordinator with the Social Security Administration.
Folks, you’re going to really enjoy them, I guarantee, so stay with us. Keep your questions handy. As the questions come into the chat room, I promise to write them down. So that I don’t take any more of Mandy and Valerie’s valuable time, I’m going to turn the microphone over to Mandy.
Mandy Lomax
Good morning and welcome. My name is Mandy Lomax and I work at the Social Security Office here in Austin, Texas. I’ve been with the agency about 20 years so I have done the full range of everything having to do with Social Security Disability and SSI Disability. I’ll go ahead and turn this over to Valerie to say hello.
Valerie Williams
My name is Valerie Williams. I’m with the Austin Resource Center for Independent Living. I basically help people to understand how their benefits would be affected by working. We do this over the phone, through information and referral.
We also do more in-depth benefit analysis where we give a more personalized explanation of how your benefits are affected and help you to explore different types of employment options and long term supports.
There are WIPAs in every state in the United States and, actually, I have a slide that has a link to the website. Back to you, Mandy.
Mandy Lomax
Let’s get started. The very first thing I want to discuss is the difference between Social Security Disability and SSI Disability. There are two separate disability programs that Social Security administers. It’s very important that those of you who receive benefits right now, the first thing you need to know is which do you receive?
The easiest way to know which you receive is to look at what day of the month you receive your check. Those of you receiving a check on the first day of the month, you are receiving SSI Disability. That is Supplemental Security Income disability. I’ll repeat that. If you get your check on the first day of the month, and also if Medicaid comes with it, you know you get SSI Disability.
If you receive a check on any other day of the month and you do not receive Medicaid, then you know you’re getting Social Security Disability. The acronym that you may hear us use is SSDI, which stands for Social Security Disability Insurance. SSDI is Social Security; SSI is the Supplemental Security Income.
I’m going to start with Social Security Disability and just go down the basics of that program, and then I’ll go over SSI. For Social Security Disability, it’s based on you having worked and paid in to Social Security. You have to work, pay your FICA taxes and become insured for benefits.
You can also receive Social Security Disability if you have a parent on whose record you could qualify, whether the parent is receiving retirement or Disability, Social Security Disability, and out of the trust fund, and your payment amount is based on your earnings that you have made over your working career.
So, the Social Security check is going to vary person to person based on your earnings. With Social Security Disability, you will automatically receive Medicare after 24 months, so this is Medicare, not Medicaid, Medicare after 24 months of entitlement to Social Security Disability.
The payment is paid either on the third day of the month or on the second, third or fourth Wednesdays of each month. That’s a very quick overview of Social Security Disability. Let’s move on to SSI and how it differs.
SSI is based on need. In addition to being disabled, you have to have limited income and limited resources. The basic income limit for an individual is $694 a month. The resource limit for an individual is $2,000, and by resources, we’re talking about money in the bank, property or real estate. Certain items don’t count.
If you are a child who is disabled, parents’ income will be considered. The maximum SSI is $674 a month. Some states will supplement that, but because there is such variation across the country, I’m not going to try to talk about state supplements today.
Along with SSI, you automatically get Medicaid. The Medicaid comes at the minute you are eligible for SSI, which is different from the Medicare for Social Security, which you have to wait 24 months to receive. SSI is paid on the first day of the month. Be sure you know SSDI is Social Security Disability and SSI is Supplemental Security Income Disability.
I want to briefly touch on how to file the benefits. The easiest way to file is by doing so online. It’s very, very simple. Simply go to www.ssa.gov and when you pull up your links list you’ll scroll down to the word disability. Once you click on disability, it’s just going to tell you the steps – one, two, three, four.
The basic steps are you’ll fill out your application online. You’ll also fill out a disability report, which is the document that you will record what your disability is, what doctors you’ve seen, what medications you’re taking, et cetera. Then you’ll have to download and sign an authorization form giving Social Security permission to contact your doctors. It’s as simple as that for Social Security.
Now, if you also want to file for SSI Disability, you will need to call our 1-800 number, which is 1-800-772-1213, for an appointment. That appointment can be by phone. They’re working very hard to get the SSI application online, but we’re just not quite there yet.
I want to briefly touch on the criteria for blindness, to be considered blind for Social Security purposes. It is statutory blindness or legal blindness – they’re both the same definition.
A rather complicated definition of what you’ll see on the screen is statutory blindness is central visual acuity of 2,200 or less in the better eye with the use of a correcting lens, or limitation in the field of vision in the better eye, so if the widest diameter of the visual field has an angle no greater than 20 degrees. Now, just because you don’t meet that criteria does not mean you couldn’t qualify for just disability based on a non-blind criteria.
I do also want to let everybody know that you have a variety of options if you are blind or visually impaired, for how you receive correspondence from Social Security. You can request, of course, a standard letter, certified, you can have us call you and read the letter to you. You can request Braille or you can request a compact disc or large print. I just wanted you all to be aware of those various options.
That’s the end of my basic overview. Let me turn it over to Valerie to talk with you about Social Security Disability work incentives.
Valerie Williams
Thank you, Mandy. There are a lot of different types of work incentives that may apply to you, depending on your individual circumstances. Of course, I’m not going to talk about them all today, but I do want to provide some general information about a few of the most common work incentives that are available to you if you receive Social Security Disability Insurance. These are available to help you, of course, in your pursuit of work.
So, what happens when you first go to work? We’ll start with the trial work period, or what it’s known to us affectionately is the TWP. The trial work period basically allows you to test your ability to work. It lasts for nine months.
During the trial work period you would still be entitled to your full benefits, no matter how much you earned. For this year, any month that your gross earnings are $720 or more, it’s considered a trial work month.
If you’re self-employed, the trial work period works a little bit differently. Then, if you work 80 hours or more per month, you’re using trial work months. The nine months of your trial work period can consist of one work attempt where you work for nine months and each month, you’re working and you’re earning over $720, or it could be several attempts over five years.
So, basically what I’m saying is that the trial work months do not have to be consecutive. If you continue to work after you’ve used all nine of your trial work period months, and your earnings are substantial, meaning you’re earning more than $1,000 gross if you’re disabled, or $1,640 if you’re blind, then you continue to receive Social Security Disability, the cash payment, for the first three months after you complete your trial work period.
After that, your Social Security Disability Insurance benefits would stop for any month that your work is substantial. Basically, what I mean by substantial is if the monthly earnings amount that we use to determine if your work is substantial, which is also referred to as substantial gainful activity, if it’s higher than the amount that we use to determine the trial work period.
This year, your work is considered substantial if your countable earnings are $1,000 gross per month or more, or if you’re blind, $1,640 gross per month or more.
Once you get out of the trial work period, then you go into what we call the extended period of eligibility and that’s a three-year period that begins right after the trial work period where your benefits would automatically be reinstated if your earnings drop below the substantial level.
If that happens, you would only need to let Social Security know and your benefits could be restarted. Of course, if you then go back to working over the substantial amount, then you would have to call Social Security and let them know.
Basically, what I’m saying is that any month where your earnings are substantial, are $1,000 if you’re disabled and $1,640 if you’re blind, gross per month, then you would need to let Social Security know so that they could adjust your benefits. Either you would get them or you wouldn’t depending on what your earnings were for that particular month. That goes on for a 36-month period. The extended period of eligibility is a 36-month period.
After the extended period of eligibility, then we would go into what’s considered the expedited reinstatement period where there is an additional five-year period where you can request Social Security, reinstate your benefits if you have to stop working or if your earnings are no longer substantial.
During the five-year period, you do not need to file the new application, but contact Social Security. They would conduct a medical review to determine if you’re still medically disabled with the same disability from your original entitlement.
During that time while they’re trying to figure out whether you’re still disabled or not, they can immediately pay you temporary or provisional SSDI benefits for up to six months, and if you’re found ineligible for reinstatement, you don’t have to repay the six months, or up to six months, provisional benefits.
I want to talk about what happens to your Medicare if you go to work. Even though your SSDI benefits stop because of substantial work, your free Medicare Part A hospital insurance coverage will continue for 93 months, which is about seven and a half years after the trial work period, even if your work is substantial.
If you have Medicare Part B and Part D, then that Medicare could also continue as long as you pay the premiums and the copayments out of pocket. At the end of the 93 months if you’re still working, you may be able to purchase Medicare coverage if you continue be disabled and you may be eligible for the Medicaid Buy-In program if your state has one.
I also wanted to mention a few other SSDI work incentives. The first is subsidy, and basically, subsidy is where Social Security will only count the value of your work. For example, if you’re paid $10 an hour but you’re only able to perform half of the duties you usually perform by someone in your position, then your countable earnings would be $5 an hour.
The difference between $10 and hour and $5 an hour is substantial or substantial gainful activity. The $10 an hour would be over the $1,640 and the $5 would not. So, subsidy is an underutilized work incentive that I think a lot of people could benefit from if they knew about it.
The impairment-related work expense is another work incentive that I wanted to talk about. Basically, an impairment-related work expense is an out-of-pocket expense that helps you be able to work. The example would be transportation costs if you had to take a cab to work. The cost of a service animal is another good example.
During the extended period of eligibility, Social Security would deduct the approved cost from countable earnings when determining if your work is substantial.
Income averaging is also during the extended period of eligibility where Social Security would average your earnings over a period of time if it would be more advantageous to you. In other words, if your income fluctuated a lot over and under the substantial level, then Social Security could, if it’s to your advantage, average it to where you would be eligible for benefits for a longer period of time.
Those are the SSDI work incentives that I wanted to cover. I’m going to release it back to Mandy to continue on with the SSI.