Responding to a Disability Denial Letter

When you have been disabled and unable to work for a period of time, you may be counting on the approval of your disability benefits in order to help you start to repay your bills and continue on with your life.  Whether you have filed for disability through a private insurer or through the Social Security Administration, you are counting on the funds you will receive to help repay your medical bills and other expenses.  If you receive a disability denial letter, you need to work quickly to appeal, not only so you can start receiving your disability benefits, but also to preserve your right to appeal and to continue to attempt to make your case.

Appealing Your Denial Letter

The first step when you receive a disability denial letter is to determine if possible why your disability benefits claim was denied.  There are a number of reasons why your disability claim may have been denied, ranging from reasons such as:

• The insurance company or Social Security office does not feel that your disability is severe enough to prevent you from working,
• Failure to provide proper medical documentation for your disability in a timely fashion, or
• Lack of medical reports or other confirmation from your doctor that was not received or not sent to the insurance company or SSA.

Typically you have a window of sixty days to appeal your disability claim once you have received your disability benefit denial letter from your insurance company or the Social Security Administration.  If you are working with private disability insurance, this window may be smaller, so you will want to find out exactly how long you have if there is any question. 

Whatever the reason for your disability benefit denial letter, you will want to try to prove your disability as rapidly and completely as possible in your appeal process.  Collect any documentation or medical reports requested by the denying agency, and if you need to, consider seeing a second doctor or a specialist for another opinion, which may help prove your case if the first doctor’s opinion was not considered sufficient.

Getting Help

Contacting a qualified professional disability benefits lawyer may be a good option when you receive a disability denial letter; if you have been going it alone, you may find that a lawyer can help the process move along more swiftly, or help the insurance company or SSA see mistakes that they may have made in denying your benefits.