The Social Security Administration (SSA) said that millions of people who get Supplemental Security Income (SSI) will no longer get their regular SSI payments from the government.
SSA data shows that more than 100,000 people were taken off the SSI lists last year.
Compared to the previous year, fewer people received Supplemental Security Income checks in May 2024 than in May 2023. Only 7,261,342 people received disability checks, which is a drop of 119,395 claims.
If you get SSI benefits or want to apply for this Social Security program, you should learn more about why the number of people receiving benefits has dropped.
Thousands of beneficiaries won’t receive their regular SSI benefits in the coming months.
People who are blind, disabled, and have little or no income can often get help from SSI. Nearly 6.1 million of the 7.2 million people who get this kind of benefit from SSA are in this group.
This group makes up most of the SSI claimants. The other 1.1 million are 65 years or older. The number of disabled or blind claimants who were no longer getting the benefit dropped by 140,034 between May 2023 and May 2024, from 6,281,068 to 6,141,034 in total.
There were 20,639 more beneficiaries aged 65 and up (1,120,308) than the year before (1,099,669).
For that time period, it was hard to figure out why the number of blind or disabled users went down. After emailing the SSA to ask why, Newsweek found that more than 10,000 people in several states were no longer getting SSI benefits.
The number of SSI applications in California went down by 16,573 between May 2023 and 2024, even though it had the most of any state in the union.
Also, more than 17,000 people who were getting disability benefits were made ineligible. Most of these people were blind or disabled.
Also, Texas’s SSI eligibility rate dropped by 14,587, from 591,710 people in May 2023 to 577,123 people now. In other states with dense populations, the number of people getting SSI benefits went down.
Like, the number of people in New York who signed up for SSI dropped from 568,777 to 559,222. In other states, the number of people applying for SSI help stayed pretty much the same.
Here in North Dakota, there were 7,906 people getting SSI this year, down just 17 from the year before (7,923). The people who got these gifts were all blind or disabled except for one.
Last but not least, some states also said they saw small differences. The number of people who got help in Rhode Island changed from 30,317 in 2023 to 30,015 in May, which is a difference of almost 300 people per year.
Other Social Security changes in SSDI and SSI benefits that beneficiaries need to be aware
They said last month that they would be changing how they handle applications for Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and SSI benefits. The agency wanted the changes to speed up the process of figuring out who is disabled.
The federal government released the changes to the final rule to make the process of filing for disability easier and cut down on the time people have to wait for decisions. The new rule makes the fourth step easier.
This step checks to see if the claimant can do a relevant activity. The final rule says that the agency will only look at activity from the last five years. It will go into effect on June 22, 2024.
Before, SSA needed a lot of information about a person’s 15 years of work, which can be hard to gather and lead to inaccurate or incomplete reports. Also, the agency will no longer look at jobs that start and end in less than 30 calendar days.
“The new rule makes it easier to apply for SSI benefits by letting applicants focus on their most recent relevant work activity while still giving enough information to make an accurate assessment,” said the federal agency.
