Question

re-examination of Social Security Administration’s current policies that may result in denying claims for Social Security Income (SSI) to persons who and mentally ill AND drug addiction and/or alcoholism. Why should we re-examine current policies ? and what current policies just a few should we re-examine for these people?

Answer 1

Social Security Administration is an independent agency in the U.S federal government to ensure social security and insurance benefits to disabled persons, survivor benefits etc. But the current policies will not cover benefits to mentally ill and drug-addicted persons. So it is important to re-examine the current policies.

SSA can deny your benefits in case the person who is applying becomes mentally ill due to alcoholic. This is a concept called DAA materiality. DAA stands for Drug and Alcohol Abuse. SSA rejects 80% claims of the mentally ill person on account of their moderate to heavy usage of alcohol. It can be justified if the client is addicted to drug and alcohol. But in all other cases, it can't be justified. So SSA should do an effective investigation before rejecting such claims and re-examine their policies.