Compassionate Allowances Public Hearing

From today's Federal Register:

SUMMARY: 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 (the Act) and can be identified with minimal objective medical information. At present, we are calling this method '‘Compassionate Allowances.’’ We plan to hold four public hearings over the next year. The purpose of this first hearing is to obtain your views about the advisability and possible methods of identifying and implementing compassionate allowances for children and adults with rare diseases. We will address other kinds of medical conditions in later hearings.

DATES: Dates and location: We must receive written comments by December 21, 2007. Comments made at the hearings will be considered in preparation of a final rule. The first hearing will be held on December 4 and December 5, 2007, between 8:45 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST), in Washington, DC. The hearings will be held at 500 E Street, SW., Washington, DC 20436, in the main hearing room of the International Trade Commission. Space limitations and time constraints require hearing attendance to be by invitation only. However, you may listen to the proceedings by calling 1–888–456–0278, at 9 a.m., EST, the mornings of December 4 and 5. If you plan to listen in, please send an e-mail to Compassionate.Allowances@ssa.gov by November 21, 2007.

Let me take a guess as to the thinking behind this:

We really want to push "compassionate allowance" since it sounds really nice. It makes it sound like we are doing something, when we really cannot do anything of consequence due to lack of budget. The problem is that we have no idea what "compassionate allowance" means, much less how it is different from what we already do, so we will hold "hearings", which will allow us to publicize "compassionate allowance", while actually doing nothing. Since allowing real people to testify and ask questions and even demonstrate could be inconvenient, we will keep these "hearings" carefully controlled.

This sounds like something cooked up at the White House. Why would an independent Social Security Administration be part of this nonsense?

The notice indicates that Diane Braunstein is now the Director of the Office of Compassionate Allowances and Listings Improvement of the Office of Disability Programs, Office of Disability and Income Security Programs at Social Security. I have found an old document showing that Braunstein was Legislative Affairs Advisor in the Office of Policy Development at Social Security in 1988. She was working for the Alzheimer's Association at one time. She was working for the National Governors Association in 2003. Braunstein appears not to be a career employee at Social Security.