Social Security is adding 13 new conditions involving the immune system and neurological disorders to the list of Compassionate Allowances.
The Compassionate Allowances program fast-tracks disability decisions to ensure that Americans with the most serious disabilities receive their benefit decisions within days instead of months or years.
"Social Security handles more than three million disability applications each year, and we need to keep innovating and making our work more efficient," Commissioner Michael J. Astrue said. "With our Compassionate Allowances program, we quickly approved disability benefits for more than 60,000 people with severe disabilities in the past fiscal year."
The new Compassionate Allowances conditions include:
Malignant Multiple Sclerosis
Paraneoplastic Pemphigus
Multicentric Castleman Disease
Pulmonary Kaposi Sarcoma
Primary Central Nervous System Lymphoma
Primary Effusion Lymphoma
Angelman Syndrome
Lewy Body Dementia
Lowe Syndrome
Corticobasal Degeneration
Multiple System Atrophy
Progressive Supranuclear Palsy
The ALS/Parkinsonism Dementia Complex
For more information on the Compassionate Allowances initiative, see the press release at www.socialsecurity.gov/pressoffice/pr/ss-expands-compassionate-allowances.html