Disability Law

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

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