Social Security has an obligation to provide benefits quickly to applicants whose medical conditions are so serious that their conditions obviously meet disability standards.
Compassionate allowances are a way of quickly identifying diseases and other medical conditions that invariably qualify under the Listing of Impairments based on minimal objective medical information. Compassionate allowances allow Social Security to quickly target the most obviously disabled individuals for allowances based on objective medical information that we can obtain quickly.
Commissioner Astrue has held four Compassionate Allowance public outreach hearings. The hearings were on rare diseases, cancers, traumatic brain injury (TBI) and stroke, and early-onset Alzheimer's disease and related dementias. The Commissioner will hold the fifth public outreach hearing on schizophrenia in November 2009. The hearing will take place in San Francisco, California.
The initial list of Compassionate Allowance conditions was developed as a result of information received at public outreach hearings, public comment on an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, comments received from the Social Security and Disability Determination Service communities, and the counsel of medical and scientific experts. Also, we considered which conditions are most likely to meet our current definition of disability.
A modest 50 conditions were selected for the initiative's rollout. The list which follows will expand over time.
Additional information about how compassionate allowances are processed
https://secure.ssa.gov/apps10/poms.nsf/lnx/...33;opendocument
Initial List of Compassionate Allowance Conditions
List of Conditions
1
Acute Leukemia
2
Adrenal Cancer - with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
3
Alexander Disease (ALX) - Neonatal and Infantile
4
Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)
5
Anaplastic Adrenal Cancer - with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
6
Astrocytoma - Grade III and IV
7
Bladder Cancer - with distant metastases or inoperable or unresectable
8
Bone Cancer - with distant metastases or inoperable or unresectable
9
Breast Cancer - with distant metastases or inoperable or unresectable
10
Canavan Disease (CD)
11
Cerebro Oculo Facio Skeletal (COFS) Syndrome
12
Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) - Blast Phase
13
Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) - Adult
14
Ependymoblastoma (Child Brain Tumor)
15
Esophageal Cancer
16
Farber's Disease (FD) - Infantile
17
Friedreichs Ataxia (FRDA)
18
Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), Picks Disease -Type A - Adult
19
Gallbladder Cancer
20
Gaucher Disease (GD) - Type 2
21
Glioblastoma Multiforme (Brain Tumor)
22
Head and Neck Cancers - with distant metastasis or inoperable or uresectable
23
Infantile Neuroaxonal Dystrophy (INAD)
24
Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC)
25
Kidney Cancer - inoperable or unresectable
26
Krabbe Disease (KD) - Infantile
27
Large Intestine Cancer - with distant metastasis or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
28
Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome (LNS)
29
Liver Cancer
30
Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL)
31
Metachromatic Leukodystrophy (MLD) - Late Infantile
32
Niemann-Pick Disease (NPD) - Type A
33
Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer - with metastases to or beyond the hilar nodes or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
34
Ornithine Transcarbamylase (OTC) Deficiency
35
Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) - Type II
36
Ovarian Cancer - with distant metastases or inoperable or unresectable
37
Pancreatic Cancer
38
Peritoneal Mesothelioma
39
Pleural Mesothelioma
40
Pompe Disease - Infantile
41
Rett (RTT) Syndrome
42
Salivary Tumors
43
Sandhoff Disease
44
Small Cell Cancer (of the Large Intestine, Ovary, Prostate, or Uterus)
45
Small Cell Lung Cancer
46
Small Intestine Cancer - with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
47
Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) - Types 0 And 1
48
Stomach Cancer - with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
49
Thyroid Cancer
50
Ureter Cancer - with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
"Keep on, Keepin' on"
Dan Cedusky, Champaign IL "Colonel Dan"
See my web site at:
http://www.angelfire.com/il2/VeteranIssues/