| Natalia Jofre: |
Hi and welcome to the Hill and Ponton Social Security Disability blog. I’m Natalia Jofre, I’m the director for our social security section. |
| Shelly Mark: |
I’m Shelly Mark, I am the senior social security attorney. |
| Natalia Jofre: |
We just wanted to give you a little bit of additional information. We previously talked about disability insurance benefits, otherwise known as regular disability benefits, and we told you the onset date and other benefits that can work in conjunction with that one. We just wanted to give you a little bit of additional information because, first of all, we have a lot of clients get confused with SSI, which is income based, but we wanted to let you know that disability insurance benefits are not affected by income for the most part. |
| Shelly Mark: |
That is correct. You can receive a private pension or a county retirement or the state retirement or some other form of income, and it’s not going to affect your disability, nor will family income, so your spouse’s income or anything like that will not affect it. |
| Natalia Jofre: |
You can be a millionaire and qualify for disability insurance benefits. There are a handful of benefits like workers comp, federal retirement benefits, it has to be that specifically, that can affect disability insurance benefits, but that has more to do with like, state/federal offsets than it has to do with household income and that that’s why it’s affecting your benefit. |
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Then the other thing we wanted to tell you is that with disability insurance benefits you also get Medicare. That is a huge medical benefit, and like we told you before, there’s a 24 month waiting period from the date you became entitled to that benefit. You do have to pay for it. The premium is somewhere in the ballpark between $100 and $200 a month, but you are able to get private healthcare or treatment with your Medicare benefits. |
| Shelly Mark: |
That is correct. |
| Natalia Jofre: |
That’s another huge bonus. |
| Shelly Mark: |
Definitely, and Medicare is very widely accepted. It’s very good insurance, and you will receive that 24 months after your entitlement date. It’ll be from when you’re found to be disabled, minus that five month waiting period we talked about. |
| Natalia Jofre: |
Yeah. All right, so that’s it for today. If you have any questions feel free to call us or visit our website, and we’ll see you next time. Thank you for watching. |
| Shelly Mark: |
Thank you. |
