Compassionate Allowances

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 five Compassionate Allowances 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. Most recently, a fifth hearing was held in San Francisco on schizophrenia.

The initial list of Compassionate Allowances 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.

The expanded list of conditions was developed by holding additional public outreach hearings, working closely with the National Institutes of Health, the Alzheimer’s Association, the National Organization for Rare Disorders, and other groups. We also reviewed information gathered from previous hearings and consulted with our internal expert medical staff.

On November 9, 2010, Commissioner Astrue will hold the sixth Compassionate Allowances Outreach hearing in Baltimore, MD at the University of Maryland Baltimore County. The subject of the hearing is cardiovascular disease and multiple organ transplants.

Initial List of Compassionate Allowances Conditions

38 New Compassionate Allowances Conditions

Additional information about how compassionate allowances are processed