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 three Compassionate Allowance public outreach hearings. The hearings were on rare diseases, cancers, and traumatic brain injury (TBI) and stroke. The Commissioner will hold the fourth public outreach hearing in Chicago on July 29, 2009. The subject of the hearing is Early-Onset Alzheimer’s Disease and Related Dementias.

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.

Initial List of Compassionate Allowance Conditions

Additional information about how compassionate allowances are processed