As a program managed by the Social Security Administration (SSA), Compassionate Allowance is a list of medical conditions that automatically qualify claimants for disability benefits. However, the “automatically” part of the equation refers to the severity of your head and neck cancer symptoms.
Undergoing a series of diagnostic tests can help the SSA determine whether your symptoms “automatically” qualify you for Social Security disability benefits. To improve your chances to qualify for disability benefits, you should consider hiring a Social Security lawyer.
Understanding What Compassionate Allowance Means
The SSA has run the disability benefits program for years to help workers that suffer from illnesses and injuries receive financial assistance until they can get back to work.
With a claim process that can continue for months, workers that suffered from severe symptoms of a qualifying disease had no way to receive quick approval for their claims. In 2008, the SSA created Compassionate Allowance to address the most serious diseases.
If you request Compassionate Allowance, you should not only get your disability benefits for head and neck cancer approved quickly, you should also receive compensation faster than the applicants that submit standard Social Security disability claims.
You do not have to file any additional paperwork because you should already have submitted the documents you need to make a compelling case. One of the best features of Compassionate Allowance is the program allows applicants to receive retroactive payment to cover the costs of lost wages and medical expenses.
Eligibility for Compassionate Allowance for Head and Neck Cancer
Head and neck cancers cover every type of cancer discovered in the head or neck except for brain tumors. Because of where head and neck cancers develop, patients might suffer from disabling conditions that impair speech, eating, and breathing.
Cancer that develops in the head can adversely impact a number of bodily functions. Although oncologists can treat head and neck cancers in their early stages, the most advanced stages require aggressive interventions that often do not improve the symptoms suffered by a victim of head and neck cancer.
Compassionate Allowance helps the patients suffering from the most disabling symptoms of head and neck cancer pay medical bills and daily expenses.
How to Qualify for Compassionate Allowance
To get approval for Compassionate Allowance for head and neck cancer, you have to do more than demonstrate that you have trouble speaking, eating, and/or breathing. You have to submit persuasive evidence in the form of the results of medical diagnostic tests. Completing a biopsy represents the only definitive way to confirm the development of a serious or even life-threatening form of head and neck cancer.
Cancer patients undergo a biopsy before an oncologist recommends a treatment regimen. With an incisional biopsy, an oncologist removes a small piece of tissue from the cancerous area of the head or neck. If the tumor has developed deeper inside the mouth or throat, then an oncologist might recommend surgery to remove some of the cancerous tissue.
Receiving the results of a biopsy that proves the advancement of head and neck cancer is the most effective way to convince the SSA to approve you for Compassionate Allowance. Your oncologist also might complete an imaging test that displays the development of tumors that are located inside the head and/or neck.
Hiring a Social Security lawyer can help you submit the type of compelling evidence that gets you approved for Compassionate Allowance with head and neck cancer.
