In the twelve-month stretch from October 2022 through September 2023, 30,000 people died while waiting for federal disability determinations, according to Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley. Martha asked Harris what she would do as president for people, like herself, who are waiting for disability decisions while in desperate need of health insurance.
Delays in those decisions, driven in part by understaffing and a Covid-related rise in disability rates, have driven the typical wait time from four months in 2019 to seven months today, often coupled with the need to appeal an initial rejection, which can take years. The processing times represent a mounting crisis for the more than 1 million Americans who apply for disability in a given year.
Yep!
No SSDI Limits on Unearned Income and Assets
A person collecting SSDI can have any amount of assets and any amount of income from investments, interest, or a spouse’s income. These are all types of “unearned income.” You (and your spouse, if you’re married) can have an unlimited amount of unearned income. Unearned income includes:
interest income dividends rent from property you don't actively manage income that your spouse earns pensions state disability payments unemployment benefits, and cash or gifts from friends and relatives.Any type of gift, even an expensive gift, doesn’t affect SSDI benefits at all. You don’t have to report gifts to the SSA as income.
This is the exact and precise opposite of how you’d think it would work if you actually wanted to use policies to nudge the disabled toward finding some gainful employment but always have a backstop in case issues flair up again, and not give out benefits to those who don’t actually need them.
But no one cares.
