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Mostly for my reference:
The lawyer called me this morning, and told me that there's a five-month waiting period for benefits between the date that they say I became disabled. That puts us in spring of 2022, so the retroactive lump sum will be about 28 months' benefits. His guess is that will be about $42,000, with a net of about $35,000 after the 20% for his fee.
It has been more than two years since the date they know/acknowledge I was disabled, so I am immediately eligible for Medicare. By default, they will enroll me, and take the premiums out of the monthly benefit payment. He recommends enrolling now, because if I wait they will charge more when I do start taking it, but emphasized that this isn't legal advice. So, one thing I/we need to do is check which of my doctors do or don't accept Medicare, and what limits there are on that.
Since I will be collecting these benefits immediately, I can wait until the maximum age for starting to take Social Security retirement benefits, maximizing my eventual monthly benefit from that.
Check whether doctors take Medicare (and if so, does it matter which plan?): primary care doctor does take at least some Medicare plans. To check: eye doctor, lung doctor, neurologist, psychologist [anything else I'm not thinking of].
Unrelatedly, I should call the MS nurse and ask whether I should keep the January appointment with the neuropsychologist, since that was originally intended to help support the disability appeal.
The lawyer called me this morning, and told me that there's a five-month waiting period for benefits between the date that they say I became disabled. That puts us in spring of 2022, so the retroactive lump sum will be about 28 months' benefits. His guess is that will be about $42,000, with a net of about $35,000 after the 20% for his fee.
It has been more than two years since the date they know/acknowledge I was disabled, so I am immediately eligible for Medicare. By default, they will enroll me, and take the premiums out of the monthly benefit payment. He recommends enrolling now, because if I wait they will charge more when I do start taking it, but emphasized that this isn't legal advice. So, one thing I/we need to do is check which of my doctors do or don't accept Medicare, and what limits there are on that.
Since I will be collecting these benefits immediately, I can wait until the maximum age for starting to take Social Security retirement benefits, maximizing my eventual monthly benefit from that.
Check whether doctors take Medicare (and if so, does it matter which plan?): primary care doctor does take at least some Medicare plans. To check: eye doctor, lung doctor, neurologist, psychologist [anything else I'm not thinking of].
Unrelatedly, I should call the MS nurse and ask whether I should keep the January appointment with the neuropsychologist, since that was originally intended to help support the disability appeal.