SOCIAL SECURITY ISN'T ALLOWED TO CARE.....

While people may like to ascribe personality traits to the Social Security Administration, this agency is not a person. It is a large bureaucratic agency of the US government, without feeling, sympathy, pity, or caring--in the human sense of the word.

In my profession, I often interact with claimants who want Social Security to care, to understand, to just be reasonable. But since it's a mammoth federal agency, it cannot do any of those things.

Social Security has a legal track laid out for it to run on. It does. It can no more deviate from that track than the southbound freight train can leave its track and travel through the plowed fields or meadows. Not possible.

Here are a few examples of what I mean.

1. Social Security doesn't care if you can't find a job. It is not an unemployment program, it's a disability program. So the only question is: Are there jobs you could do? Whether you can find a job is beside the point and can't be considered.

2. It doesn't care that you live in a small, rural community where there are no jobs. The agency looks at the "national job data, estimating the number of jobs in the USA, not your town, county, or even your state. It simply cannot personalize or individualize.

3. Social Security doesn't care if you can't live on a minimum wage job. The law requires them to deny your claim if they determine that you could perform low-paying unskilled work.

4. It does not care that your family really needs the benefits. Unfortunately, your financial need is not taken into consideration--only whether you meet their rules.

5. It doesn't care that someone else, whom you feel is not disabled, got approved while you got denied. The agency can't see any irony in that.

6. Social Security doesn't seem to care that you desperately believe that you're disabled. It only wants objective medical proof.

Why am I saying this? It's not to disparage the Social Security Administration and certainly not the thousands of good, caring people who work there. I am saying that you, as a claimant, need to have a realistic notion about Social Security as a big government agency that makes its own rules, doesn't care for your rules or mine, and has very specific requirements if you want to get paid.

This brings us to the rather nasty truth that you must understand the boring, confusing, technical, legal, nit-picky regulations, rules, laws and precedents that stand between you and a benefit check. You must put feelings aside and map out a legal, technical route that will hopefully meet all the rules and get you approved.