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 will 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 two Compassionate Allowance public outreach hearings. The first was on rare diseases and the second was on cancers. A third hearing on brain injuries was held on November 18, 2008.
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 have been selected for the initiative’s rollout. The list which follows may expand over time.
List of Conditions
- Acute Leukemia
- Adrenal Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
- Alexander Disease (ALX) – Neonatal and Infantile
- Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS)
- Anaplastic Adrenal Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
- Astrocytoma – Grade III and IV
- Bladder Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable or unresectable
- Bone Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable or unresectable
- Breast Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable or unresectable
- Canavan Disease (CD)
- Cerebro Oculo Facio Skeletal (COFS) Syndrome
- Chronic Myelogenous Leukemia (CML) – Blast Phase
- Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD) – Adult
- Ependymoblastoma (Child Brain Tumor)
- Esophageal Cancer
- Farber’s Disease (FD) – Infantile
- Friedreichs Ataxia (FRDA)
- Frontotemporal Dementia (FTD), Picks Disease -Type A – Adult
- Gallbladder Cancer
- Gaucher Disease (GD) – Type 2
- Glioblastoma Multiforme (Brain Tumor)
- Head and Neck Cancers – with distant metastasis or inoperable or uresectable
- Infantile Neuroaxonal Dystrophy (INAD)
- Inflammatory Breast Cancer (IBC)
- Kidney Cancer – inoperable or unresectable
- Krabbe Disease (KD) – Infantile
- Large Intestine Cancer – with distant metastasis or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
- Lesch-Nyhan Syndrome (LNS)
- Liver Cancer
- Mantle Cell Lymphoma (MCL)
- Metachromatic Leukodystrophy (MLD) – Late Infantile
- Niemann-Pick Disease (NPD) – Type A
- Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer – with metastases to or beyond the hilar nodes or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
- Ornithine Transcarbamylase (OTC) Deficiency
- Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI) – Type II
- Ovarian Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable or unresectable
- Pancreatic Cancer
- Peritoneal Mesothelioma
- Pleural Mesothelioma
- Pompe Disease – Infantile
- Rett (RTT) Syndrome
- Salivary Tumors
- Sandhoff Disease
- Small Cell Cancer (of the Large Intestine, Ovary, Prostate, or Uterus)
- Small Cell Lung Cancer
- Small Intestine Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
- Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA) – Types 0 And 1
- Stomach Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
- Thyroid Cancer
- Ureter Cancer – with distant metastases or inoperable, unresectable or recurrent
