Is COPD a Disability? Benefits Help in Wisconsin.
How Social Security Disability Provides Financial Relief for COPD
When your lungs don’t function the way they’re supposed to, every day becomes a struggle. Everything in your life is affected by how you breathe.
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) distracts from everything else. It can make small tasks hard to do. When it’s bad enough, it can make working for a living impossible.
Is COPD a disability that qualifies for financial relief? Social Security recognizes it as an impairment that can get you disability benefits when you can’t work.
If you have COPD conditions like emphysema or chronic bronchitis, monthly disability checks and access to Medicare can help cover your daily expenses and ease the strain of rising medical bills.
Being eligible for benefits, however, doesn’t automatically mean you get benefits. Social Security makes it tough. More than a third of all first-time applicants in Wisconsin are denied.
The key to winning disability benefits isn’t just showing you’re ill. It’s showing your COPD is bad enough to prevent you from performing a job—just about any job—for at least 12 months.
Making your case to Social Security shouldn’t be another burden for you. A skilled disability attorney can provide real support.
From gathering all the evidence to picking the right forms to fill out to appealing a denial before a hearing judge, the Wisconsin Disability lawyers at the Becker Law Office and Hawks Quindel can be with you every step of the way.
We’ve helped thousands across Wisconsin win the benefits to stabilize their lives.
Disability Law Is All We Do.
Qualifying for Social Security Disability Benefits with COPD
With chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, your lungs are damaged, your air flow is obstructed, breathing is hard, and you might not be able to work long without exhaustion. If you have emphysema or chronic bronchitis, those are the two most common forms of COPD.
In emphysema you have damage to your alveoli, the air sacs in your lungs. Chronic bronchitis is constant inflammation of your bronchial tubes that carry air to and from your lungs.
To apply for disability for COPD, you’ll need to document your symptoms using reports and records from your doctors and medical treatment. The symptoms you describe for Social Security might include:
- Persistent, long-term cough with mucus
- Difficulty taking deep breaths
- Wheezing
- Shortness of breath doing routine activities
In some cases, you can develop a barrel-shaped chest or have bluish skin, a sign of cyanosis from the lack of oxygen in your blood.
COPD gets worse over time. Social Security’s listing of “chronic respiratory disorders” calls for a battery of lung tests to prove your condition is severe.
You also must prove that your COPD has derailed your ability to earn a paycheck.
This requires an evaluation of your “residual functional capacity,” or RFC, which Social Security defines as how severely your COPD impacts your ability to perform fundamental job tasks and manage your day.
Your RFC is an assessment of how much physical and mental activity you can do despite your illness.
If you’re unsure whether you can get disability for COPD, the Wisconsin Social Security Disability lawyers at the Becker Law Office can provide answers.
Give us a call today from anywhere in Wisconsin, and we will evaluate whether COPD qualifies for disability in your case.
We charge nothing to give you our experienced opinion. In fact, you pay no attorney fees until you win your disability benefits.
How to Prove Your COPD Disability Benefits Case
Proving your chronic obstructive pulmonary disease qualifies you for Social Security Disability benefits in Wisconsin requires detective work.
Social Security will want to see in-depth medical evidence of your condition and all the treatment options you have explored to manage it. These include:
- Physical exam results
- Laboratory test results
- Notes from your doctors describing your medical history
- Detailed notes showing that you stuck to your treatment plan
For COPD, you must also take specific tests, known as pulmonary function tests, which demonstrate your diminished lung capacity. These include:
- Spirometry: measures how much air you can breathe in and out
- Arterial Blood Gas (ABG) Test: measures how much oxygen and carbon dioxide is in your blood
- Imaging Tests like MRIs and X-rays: reveal the physical condition of your lungs
Social Security will then want to see how your symptoms impact your ability to do routine daily tasks, such as standing, walking and lifting objects.
They will also want to see how COPD affects your mental capacity, such as finding and processing information, remembering things, concentrating and focusing.
These items go into your residual functional capacity (RFC) measurement.
You’ll need complete documentation of your work history that shows you cannot transfer your skills to another job if you can’t continue in the job you had.
It’s a lot to gather all this evidence. At the Becker Law Office, we can help with the legwork. If you have already had your application denied, we can handle all the steps of an appeal.
Can you get disability benefits for COPD? It’s possible if you approach it the right way.
In Wisconsin, we guide you through every step to give you the best chance to win the disability benefits that will put your life on a better path.