"Long-Hauler" Disability Claims Start To Trickle In

      From National Public Radio:

When COVID-19 first arrived in the U.S., Jodee Pineau-Chaisson was working as the director of social services for a nursing home in western Massachusetts called Center for Extended Care in Amherst. By the middle of April, residents were getting sick.

In early May, Pineau-Chaisson was tapped for a particular duty: "I was asked to go on to the COVID-19 units to do FaceTime calls, so they could say goodbye to their family members," she recalls. "I was very scared."

She was worried about contracting the virus, but also felt like she owed it to her residents. So, at 55 years old and with no pre-existing conditions, Pineau-Chaisson put on an N95 mask, a white jumpsuit, and she entered the units to help. Three days later, she had COVID-19. ...

It's now been almost ten months since Pineau-Chaisson got sick, yet she is still dealing with a series of devastating ailments. She says she has memory problems, body pain, heart palpitations, depression and chronic fatigue. ...

Pineau-Chaisson is a so-called long-hauler. These are people who survive COVID-19 but have symptoms – sometimes debilitating symptoms – many months later. As scientists scramble to explain what is going on and figure out how to help, disability advocates are also scrambling: They are trying to figure out whether long-haulers will qualify for disability benefits.

Disability advocates and lawmakers are calling on the Social Security Administration or SSA to study the issue, update their policies and offer guidance for applicants.

"If we end up with a million people with ongoing symptoms that are debilitating, that is a tremendous burden for each of those individuals, but also for our healthcare system and our society," says Dr. Steven Martin, a physician and professor of family medicine and community health at UMass Medical School.

"We know what's coming. So, we have to make sure that we're on top of this," says U.S. Rep John Larson, a Democrat from Connecticut, who joined with another member of Congress to write a letter asking the SSA to work with scientists to understand what support long-haulers might need. ...

In a statement, the SSA told NPR that the current disability policy rules should be sufficient for evaluating COVID-related applicants, though the agency did not rule out taking additional action in the future. "Researchers are still learning about the disease and we will continue to look at our policies as research evolves," the statement said. ...

     As I've said before, it's easy for me to predict what Social Security will do with post-Covid "long hauler" cases. They'll delay and delay and delay doing anything with the claims. They'll then deny virtually every one of them but many will be approved after a hearing. Meanwhile, the agency will release a vague Ruling that will give no criteria whatsoever that could be interpreted as a standard by which a claim could be approved or, for that matter, denied. The Ruling will say that all evidence must be considered, blah, blah, blah. The agency is quite experienced in issuing such Rulings that seem to say something but which actually say nothing. If you refuse to say what the standard is, no one can blame you for not following the standard.

     By the way, I have my first post-Covid long hauler case now. Other attorneys tell me that they're starting to see a trickle of these cases. No one has any idea whether this will stay a trickle or become a flood but there's evidence that a significant percentage of those who suffer even mild cases of Covid-19 are still having symptoms six months later so the flood scenario is quite real.