Discover the Top Five Ways to get Social Security Benefits

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Transcription:

“Hi my name is Andrew Kinney; I'm a social security attorney with Hoglund Law offices in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I'm doing this video today because I wanted to give you the top five ways to get approved for social security benefits.

During a typical year I do between four and five hundred hearings. In those hearings, I see patterns in ways people get approved and patterns of ways people get denied. So here are the top five ways to get approved for social security benefits.

Number one, get an attorney. If you have an attorney, your attorney is trained in law and your attorney can argue before the hearing in legal arguments and briefs, during the hearing with a judge who is also an attorney, and also after the hearing in terms of legal arguments. During the hearing as well, there are experts that your attorney can cross-examine. So if you want an attorney, you need to make sure to hire a law firm because only lawyers and law firms can give legal advice.

The second way to get approved for social security benefits, is to make sure to treat for your medical conditions. If you have a medical problem but don't get care for it, it is hard to prove your disability with no objective medical findings, especially if you decide perhaps that there is nothing that can be done. So, if you have a medical problem that perhaps no surgery is possible as of right now, make sure to treat for it from time to time and let your doctor know how it is progressing, because we need to prove what is wrong and to prove what is wrong leads us to prove why you can't work fulltime for a medical reason. That is the legal standard of disability.

The third way to get approved for social security disability benefits is to always take your medications. When someone is prescribed medications, such as a diabetic, it is clear enough why someone needs to take the insulin. But there are also other medications for other conditions, such as depression, where medications can have some positive effects or may have negative side effects. What is important is that your doctor prescribed you the medication and that you take the medications, and if there is a side effect of the medication, make sure to let your doctor know about it. Because one thing that social security determines is whether you are doing your best to get better.

The fourth way to get approved for benefits, is to treat for chemical dependency. If you have difficulties with alcohol, illegal drugs, or prescribed pain medications, try to get help early on. Certainly it is not healthy for you to have those difficulties and in the clients that I help, this situation arises from time to time. For example, if someone has chronic depression or anxiety, and they also take illegal drugs, one of the problems over time is the judges look at the treatment and decide legitimately whether the medications you are taking don't work because they are offset by your drug addiction. So if you have a medical problem such as an addiction, talk to your doctor about it, be upfront about it, and try to attack it because that clouds the judge's ability to see underneath that problem as to what are actually disabled for.

Finally, try to get a statement from your treating doctor. And when I say statement, it isn't very effective if your treating doctor writes a letter and says, "I know Joe and he is disabled." What I'm talking about is something we do along the line at Hoglund Law offices. We have forms that lay out functional limitations that people have and we ask a doctor: what are the treating problems; how many days might they miss a month; what sort of hourly work can they do, can they work 8 hours a day, can they sit, stoop, walk, stand? Can they concentrate? Can they handle stress? Things like that. We are taking the doctor's diagnosis and treatment, and justification for the diagnosis and treatment, and we are taking it one step further, we are having your treating doctor essentially come into the hearing room by form of this paper and testify what you are limited in doing. That does not guarantee an approval, but it definitely helps for my clients to be able to get approved.

So those are the top five ways to get approved for Social Security Disability benefits. If you wish to hire our law firm you can feel free to go to www.Hoglundlaw.com. If you choose to go ahead with the hearing on your own, keep in mind that you can but you have some challenges here. We do have a free guide on our website that would help you too. Take care.”