Three Senators have written Social Security's Acting Commissioner demanding answers about the agency's policies for long Covid disability claims.
However, so far, the real long Covid story at Social Security has been how few disability claims have been filed based upon long Covid.
5 comments:
What, zero Republicans signed off on the letter? Nooooo...
I think that’s because Covid is really no worse than a common cold, right?. I’ve seen that commented a lot on this blog by many people. If it’s so benign, I would assume there would be very few long haul cases.
Though I understand long Covid doesn’t necessarily only affect people with comorbidities, that group is more likely than younger, healthier individuals to be affected. It stands to reason tat a large number of individuals dealing with significant effects of Covid are either (a) too old to apply for disability, (b) already on disability, (c) already had applications pending when Covid hit, (d) got vaccinated early and avoided long-term effects if they caught it, or (e) died instead of having long-term effects.
In my limited experience with claimants who have had Covid while their apps were pending, Delta was by far the worst variant and being unvaccinated yielded the worst outcome. I have not seen any long Covid cases yet, though a couple of individuals were still requiring O2 to maintain their sats at discharges this past fall and three other individuals died in the hospital unfortunately.
Probably no answers because there is so little long-term evidence.
JAMA indicates about 46% of those who had Covid suffered "long-term Covid symptoms". However, the conditions lists as a side effect include hair loss, rash, decreased sexual drive, penile length, etc. In short, having a diagnosis of "long Covid" seems pointless since it could mean anything.
It seems better suited to continue to decide disability cases on the current impairments and not based on an overly broad category that includes things that have no impact on one's ability to perform work.
No one knows for sure the long lasting effects of COVID19 on someone. But, I am sure SSA won't be prepared to handle any influx of cases related to COVID-19 because the agency is a rudderless ship.
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