Qualifications for Social
Medical Requirements for Disability: Does My Condition Count?
Social Security keeps a list of impairments that it recognizes for disability benefits. For each condition, they use highly technical medical terms to explain what you’ll need to show to win approval.
You’ll need reports from your doctors, medical test results and more.
The list can be a useful guide to getting benefits. But whether or not your medical condition is on the list, the most important factor is how your daily symptoms limit your working life.
Our Social Security Disability lawyers have helped people win benefits with all the conditions below. Many of these are on the official list, but not all:
- Anxiety
- Arthritis
- Autism
- Autoimmune diseases
- Back problems
- Bipolar disorder
- Brain injuries
- COPD, Long-COVID, and other breathing problems
- Dementia, early onset Alzheimer’s and other cognitive problems
- Depression
- Ehlers-Danlos syndrome (EDS)
- Heart problems
- Lupus
- Mast cell activation syndrome (MCAS)
- Mental health conditions
- Obesity
- PTSD and C-PTSD
- Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS)
- Rare genetic conditions
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Schizophrenia
- Sjogren’s syndrome
While these are ailments we often see, you can have many others not listed here and qualify for benefits. Your disability claim often comes down to what Social Security calls your “residual functional capacity,” or RFC.
This is a measure of activities you can and cannot do, such as standing, walking, lifting, carrying and concentrating.
Your doctor fills out a form assessing you on these basic capabilities needed for most jobs.
Your Utah disability lawyer from Barnes Disability makes sure you get the right information to meet the medical requirements for disability.
You can talk to us for free to find out more about your own SSD eligibility.
How You Qualify for Disability Benefits: Work and Financial Requirements
While health struggles are the core qualifications for Social Security Disability, your work history and financial situation set the grounds for how disability benefits cover you.
Social Security runs two disability programs, which are both for people who cannot work because of bad health. But they’re different in who qualifies financially.
Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) covers people who worked and paid Social Security taxes:
- You must have worked enough to earn credits in the Social Security system.
- You cannot still be working more than what Social Security considers to be “substantial gainful activity,” or SGA. This is a monthly limit on how much you can earn. If you go over that, they’ll say you’re able to work and don’t need benefits.
- Your SSDI benefits will be calculated in part using your past income history (but it doesn’t fully replace your income from working.)
- With SSDI, you get access to Medicare health coverage even when you’re not the usual age for Medicare eligibility. There’s a two-year waiting period to get on Medicare, but often when you’re approved for SSDI, you’ll get credit for time that has already passed.
Supplemental Security Income (SSI) provides disability benefits for people without enough of a work record to have paid Social Security taxes and qualify for SSDI.
- For SSI, your income must be below certain levels.
- You cannot have financial resources, such as savings, investments or property other than your main home, worth more than minimal amounts.
- Your monthly checks for SSI are based on a standard rate set by the government. The program will reduce your amount to account for some other kinds of income or benefits you may be receiving.
- With SSI, you get access to Medicaid health care immediately.
The Utah disability lawyers at Barnes Disability Advocates can walk you through all the disability qualifiers and take care of the information you need to provide so you don’t have to worry about it as much.
Disability benefits through Social Security are an important way to make sure the financial foundation of your life holds so you can manage your health and work toward better times.
Ask our Social Security Disability lawyers how you could meet the qualifications.
Do You Want to Know More About Our Disability Lawyers in Utah?
Barnes Disability also helps with long-term disability claims when you have a private insurance policy to protect your finances if you lose the ability to work. Our disability attorneys have decades of experience and a mission to help everyday people find peace and dignity in difficult times.
