Compassionate Allowances Hearings Continue
March 1, 2008
Author: Catherine M. Callery (Kate)| Louise M. Tarantino
Announced in the February 28, 2008 Federal Register, 73 Fed. Reg. 10715, the Social Security Administration’s Compassionate Allowances program continues with the scheduling of a second public hearing on April 7, 2008 between 8:45 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. in Boston, MA. The hearing will be held at the Broad Institute Auditorium of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. While the public is welcome to attend the hearing, only invited witnesses will present testimony. You may also watch the proceedings live via webcast beginning at 9 a.m. You may access the webcast link for the hearing on the Social Security Administration Web page at http://www.socialsecurity.gov/compassionateallowances/hearings0407.htm .
“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 cancers. Our first hearing, on December 4-5, 2007, dealt with rare diseases. We will address other kinds of medical conditions in later hearings. . . . This notice constitutes a limited reopening of the comment period with respect to children and adults with cancers, as well as topics covered at the hearing on April 7, 2008.”
The standard being pursued with this program, or “method,” as the Administration describes it, is “to quickly identify diseases and other serious medical conditions that obviously meet the definition of disability under the Social Security Act (the Act) and can be identified with minimal objective medical information.”
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