We want to extract data by querying a JSON object (hash, dictionary, map, object) which contains an array of JSON objects:

{
  "responses": [
    {
      "patient": {
        "ssid": "101010-XXXX",
      },
      "patient": {
        "ssid": "070710-XXXX",
      }
   ]
 }
}

In Postgresql 9.4 and higher we can write the following query to query nested arrays of objects:

SELECT
   * 
FROM
   messages 
WHERE
   body -> 'responses' @> '[{"patient":[{"ssid":"070710-XXXX"}]}]';

In earlier versions of Postgres we can use the jsonb_array_elements function:

WITH json_messages AS (
 SELECT jsonb_array_elements(body#>'{responses}')->'patient'->>'ssid', id from messages
)
SELECT * FROM json_messages WHERE ssid = '010150-XXXX';