The Social Security disability benefits people have turned me down, and we are filing another appeal, this time asking for a hearing (there is a prescribed sequence of appeals). Because the lawyer got the explanation before I did, we filed the appeal asking for a hearing before I saw their explanation.

According to the letter they sent me, they turned me down because I can still walk, sit, and stand and thus can do light work, such as editing. This means I am going to have to sit down, probably with my lawyer, and with [personal profile] cattitude and [personal profile] adrian_turtle and maybe other people, and figure out how to explain that the problem isn't just, or primarily, my orthopedic issues. It's the neurological problems, and that even with the brain meds [1], I have lost some of of my ability to see patterns, and to identify and solve problems, and those are essential to the work I was doing and know how to do.

I am not looking forward to this: not only is it depressing, I usually try to conceal those problems, and find workarounds in day-to-day life, like taking a familiar route rather than finding a new and better one.

At least the explanation makes enough sense that there's something to refute.

[1] The relevant medication here is the Ritalin, which I have spent a lot of time chasing down in the last few months; the lsat I heard, we'll be lucky if they fix the current world-wide shortage of it and other drugs used for ADHD is fixed this year. I don't know whether we will want to tell them that my workarounds such as they are require a reliable supply of medication, that nobody has a reliable supply of right now.
The pharmacist and I have, I believe, fought the insurance company to a draw: they won't be paying for the prescription, but I will be paying about the same amount as my copay would be if they were covering it.

As far as I can tell, the insurance company decided it doesn't like the way the doctor sent in three consecutive 30-day prescriptions, even though it worked last time. In fact, they covered the first and second of these three.

I discovered this because the CVS robot said the prescription would be ready today at noon, and then I got a message saying they were reaching out to my doctor for an alternative medication, so I called the pharmacy. The pharmacist told me that the problem was with the insurance company, and I asked him to check what it would cost me if I didn't have insurance. He said he thought it was over $100, but checked, and said it would be $49. I told him to go ahead and fill it, and he did something at his end and told me had found a coupon and I'll be paying $20.40 (or thereabouts).

I am noting this partly to remember to tell Carmen about it next month and ask if we need to do something different next time.
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