Social Security Administration April 13, 2005 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

We are planning to update and revise the rules we use to evaluate respiratory disorders of adults and children who apply for, or receive, disability benefits under title II and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments based on disability under title XVI of the Social Security Act (the Act). The rules we plan on revising are sections 3.00 and 103.00 in the Listing of Impairments in appendix 1 to subpart P of part 404 of our regulations (the listings). We invite you to send us comments and suggestions for updating and revising these rules. After we have considered your comments and suggestions, as well as information about advances in medical knowledge, treatment, and methods of evaluating respiratory disorders, and our program experience, we intend to publish for public comment a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) that will propose specific revisions to the rules. As part of our long-term planning for the disability programs, we are also interested in your ideas for how we may be able to improve our programs for people who have respiratory disorders, especially those who would like to work.

We are considering whether to propose new rules for evaluating language and speech disorders. The new rules would apply to adults and children who apply for, or receive, disability benefits under title II and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) payments based on disability under title XVI of the Social Security Act (the Act). Specifically, we are considering whether to add a new body system in the Listing of Impairments in appendix 1 to subpart P of part 404 of our regulations (the listings) for these disorders. We invite you to send us comments about whether we should establish these new rules, as well as suggestions about what the proposed rules should include. We will consider your comments and suggestions, as well as information about advances in medical knowledge, treatment, and methods of evaluating language and speech disorders, along with our program experience. If we decide to propose new listings for language and speech disorders, we will publish them as proposed rules for public comment in a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM). As part of our long-term planning for the disability programs, we are also interested in your ideas for how we may improve our programs for people with disabilities, including people who have disabilities based on language and speech disorders, and especially those who would like to work.

We propose to revise our regulations to identify additional bases upon which we may bring charges to disqualify an individual from acting as a representative before the Social Security Administration (SSA), and to set forth the conditions under which we will reinstate an individual whom we have disqualified as a representative because the individual collected or received, and retains, a fee in excess of the amount we authorized. These proposed rules revise our regulations on the representation of parties to implement section 205 of the Social Security Protection Act of 2004 (SSPA) and to make additional changes in these regulations that relate to the changes required by this legislation. The rules also propose three technical changes in our regulations on the representation of parties. DATES: To be sure that we consider your comments, we must receive them by June 13, 2005.