Please advocate for the ALS Disability Insurance Access Act

The ALS Disability Insurance Access Act (H.R. 1407) is a bill that is being proposed to congress asking them to remove the five-month waiting period that ALS patients must wait to receive their Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI). ALS patients currently start receiving their SSDI benefits five months after diagnosis of ALS. However, they need it immediately after diagnosis as so many who are diagnosed with ALS do not live long enough to receive the benefits available to them five months after diagnosis. Many people with ALS are diagnosed long after the disease has been affecting their bodies, and therefore they may not live long after being officially diagnosed. This is the reasoning behind the ALS Disability Insurance Act; to allow more people diagnosed with ALS to receive the benefits from their disability insurance when they really need it. 

ALS is a very gruesome disease that slowly takes over the body by taking away bodily control from a person, such as the ability to move one’s arms, ability to speak, and eventually the ability for one to breath. ALS is such a complicated disease to diagnose that it is most often the case that those who do get diagnosed are already a year or two, at minimum, into their journey with ALS. This is a large reason why so many people die with in a few weeks or months of their diagnosis, often times before five months have elapsed since their diagnosis. In general, most ALS patients only live between two and five years after getting their official diagnosis, but many do not even make it this long. This fact makes the need for support of this ALS Disability Insurance Act even more crucial. 

Victims of ALS and their families need lots of support medically, physically, and emotionally in order to deal with this disease in the time that the patient has left. In order for these patients and their families to afford and/or receive these supports, they must be able to receive their SSDI benefits from the time that they are diagnosed. As a result of the urgency and importance of this bill, I am asking you, the reader, to please pledge your support for this bill and to ask your friends and family to pledge their support for it. You and your family and friends can show your support for this bill by informing others about it and/or writing to your congressional representatives and senators asking them to vote for it. This may seem like a simple task, however, if we work together as a state and a country to raise support for this, then it will become something significant.