Social Security Administration October 30, 2009 – 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, April 2008, November 2008, and July 2009, we held Compassionate Allowance public hearings. These hearings concerned rare diseases, cancers, traumatic brain injury and stroke, early-onset alzheimer's and related dementias, respectively. This hearing is the fifth in the series. The purpose of this hearing is to obtain your views about the advisability and possible methods of identifying and implementing compassionate