Anecdata: My fiancee has lupus and a kidney transplant. There are days where they are completely bedbound and days where they can walk around just fine, depend

Anecdata: My fiancee has lupus and a kidney transplant. There are days where they are completely bedbound and days where they can walk around just fine, depending on if they are in a lupus flare and what it is attacking. All of their doctors (rheumatologist, nephrologist, and internist) have urged her to apply for disability as they all consider them firmly in the permanently disabled camp. > Urban legend is that after the third time they just magically approve it. The state you are in seems to make a big difference. My fiance applied three times in the state of Florida and were denied all three times. They were approved on their first application in Wisconsin. Your medical situation also seems to make a big difference. In Florida, my fiance's doctors were spread around, requiring several trips to get paperwork. In Wisconsin, they are all at a single hospital, so requesting records was simple, and the medical records department sent all of them at once from all of their doctors with a single request. > There's a whole group of lawyers that specialize in getting people approved for disability benefits. Many of them work on contingency, taking a cut of the back pay that you get when a previously rejected application is ultimately approved. I understand that lawyers need to be paid, but taking a cut of someone's disability benefits seems pretty low to me. (That said, there are firms that work on a pro-bono, sliding scale, or a fee-for-service basis where they do not take a cut of your back payment.) > It's very easy for the overweight to qualify for heart/breathing problems. I wish this myth would die. The morbidly obese very rarely qualify for disability. > [Y]ou would assume that $804/month is a low enough amount to keep people from applying. It won't even cover rent in many places. Many places have supplemental rent assistance and other benefits that you become eligible for once you are on disability, which mitigates some of that.