Long Covid And Disability Claims

      From Bloomberg Law:

The Social Security Administration said it’s received 16,000 claims for disability insurance since December where the person’s medical evidence supports identifying Covid-19 as one of their impairments. That’s far from an exact number, and the agency wouldn’t say how many of those claims have been approved. 

That doesn’t mean Covid-19 was necessarily the primary reason for applying, or that it’s the impairment that will determine if disability benefits are approved, an agency spokesperson said in an email. …

In a statement to Bloomberg Law, the SSA said its rules allow it to evaluate Covid-19 cases. A person who has limitations resulting from long Covid, who’s met or is expected to meet the duration requirement, “could be found disabled if their limitations equal a medical listing or if the combination of those limitations and vocational factors prevent them from performing substantial gainful activity,” the agency said. …

Barbara Comerford’s law firm in New Jersey has about 100 clients who can’t work due to long Covid but have been denied disability benefits. 

Most of them have extreme fatigue presenting like myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome, a condition that doesn’t show up on routine tests even though it can leave its victims bedridden.

“It’s amazing how indifferent they are to these claims,” Comerford said of the insurance companies she’s fighting. 

Unum Group, one of the leading carriers of long-term disability, told Bloomberg Law that disability and leave claims connected to Covid-19 are primarily a short-term event. Most claimants recover before completing the normal qualification period of 90 or 180 days for long-term disability insurance, Natalie Godwin, a company spokesperson, said in an email. …

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said it was recently asked to present data to the SSA on the number of people expected to have myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome as a result of Covid-19.

The SSA is doing its “due diligence and gathering data from all sources that they possibly can to understand and be prepared,”Elizabeth Unger, chief of the Chronic Viral Diseases Branch at the CDC, said in an interview. …

     All I can say is that my firm has not been getting calls about long Covid.