Commissioner Astrue held an event at the Hart Senate Building at 10:00 a.m in Washington, DC to commemorate the milestone of reaching 200 Compassionate Allowances conditions. Dravet Syndrome is one of the newest additions to this list of rare and debilitating conditions. This is a huge victory for people affected by Dravet Syndrome, and ICE Alliance was a key participant in the presentations and communication with the Agency that allowed our community to win this recognition.
“Compassionate Allowances (CAL) 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 target the most obviously disabled individuals for allowances based on objective medical information that we can obtain quickly. Compassionate Allowances is not a separate program from the Social Security Disability Insurance or Supplemental Security Income programs.” – Social Security Administration
CAL conditions are selected using information received at public outreach hearings, comments received from the Social Security and Disability Determination Services communities, counsel of medical and scientific experts, and our research with the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Also, we consider which conditions are most likely to meet our current definition of disability.