Social Security Administration November 10, 2008 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

We are considering ways to quickly identify diseases and other serious medical conditions that obviously meet the definition of disability under the Social Security Act (Act) and can be identified with minimal objective medical information. We are calling this method ``Compassionate Allowances.'' In December 2007 and April 2008, we held two Compassionate Allowance public hearings. These hearings concerned rare diseases and cancers, respectively. This hearing is the third in the series. The purpose of this hearing is to obtain your views about the advisability and possible methods of identifying and implementing compassionate allowances for children and adults with brain injuries. We plan to address other medical conditions at subsequent hearings.

We are amending our rules governing how we investigate representative payee applicants. Under these rules, any payee who previously satisfied the payee investigation criteria, including a face-to-face interview, and currently serves as a payee generally need not appear for another face-to-face interview when subsequently applying to become a payee unless we determine within our discretion, that a new face-to-face interview is necessary. The payee applicant would still be required to satisfy the rest of the investigation process as set forth in the regulations. Reducing the number of subsequent face-to-face interviews of payee applicants will streamline our representative payee application process, allowing payee applicants to become qualified more quickly when they already serve as a payee. This rule also will expedite payment of benefits in certain representative payee situations and reduce the burden on our field office employees by eliminating the necessity of interviewing such payee applicants.