Social Security to Add Early Onset Alzheimer's Benefit
All to often people who suffer from disease are unable to get care due to insurance company limitations and policies, lack of insurance or finances to cover expenses. Sometimes folks are left with Social Security Benefit applications for their care.
In its effort to improve and expedite the disability determination process, the Social Security Administration (SSA) has announced that it will add early-onset Alzheimer's disease to its Compassionate Allowances Initiative. The initiative identifies debilitating diseases and medical conditions that meet the SSA's disability standards for Social Security Disability Income (SSDI) or Supplemental Security Income (SSI).
Social Security is launching this expedited decision process with a total of 50 conditions. Over time, more diseases and conditions will be added. A list of the first 50 impairments -- 25 rare diseases and 25 cancers -- can be found at www.socialsecurity.gov/compassionateallowances.
This recent development will lead to increased care more quickly for those who could not otherwise afford it.
Since 2003, the Alzheimer's Association has been advocating on behalf of individuals with early-onset Alzheimer's as they navigate the Social Security disability determinations process and welcomes the SSA's decision. Until now, individuals with early-onset Alzheimer's disease have faced a myriad of challenges when applying for SSDI or SSI, including a long decision process, initial denials, and multiple appeals.
Today's decision will simplify and streamline the SSDI/SSI application process and decrease the wait time for benefits, which for some has lasted as long as three years. There are currently an estimated 5.3 million Americans with Alzheimer's disease. Although the majority of Alzheimer cases are individuals age 65 and older, a significant number of people under age 65 are also affected by this fatal disease and have few financial options other than the Social Security disability program.
This good news comes at a time when politics has brought the issue of universal health care to a stand still. It always intrigues me that certain folks think the "right" to choose a doctor, hence stumping public/social or universal health care, exists. While, at the same time, those folks shun the idea that anyone has a "right" to not be subject to Rendition based on suspicion, or the "right" of due process.
What ever your reflection on the matter, the recent Compassionate Allowances Initiative moves us in the right direction.
nd smoking indicates that smoking cigarettes is a significant risk factor for the disease. After controlling for study design, quality of the journals, time of publication, and tobacco industry affiliation of the authors, the UCSF research team also found an association between tobacco industry affiliation and the conclusions of individual studies. Industry-affiliated studies indicated that smoking protects against the development of Alzheimer's Disease, while independent studies showed that smoking increased the risk of developing the disease. 
Studies of alcohol use and cognition among the elderly are rare and have mixed results. A study of drinking among the elderly in Brazil has found that heavy alcohol use is associated with more memory and cognitive problems than mild-to-moderate alcohol use, especially among women.
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dementia were assessed. These patients were followed for between 0.8 and 5.5 years after having the scan and underwent between two and six assessments for dementia during that timeframe.
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The general pattern of brain atrophy resulting from Alzheimer's disease has long been known through autopsy studies, but exploiting this knowledge toward accurate diagnosis and monitoring of the disease has only recently been made possible by improvements in computational algorithms that automate identification of brain structures with MRI. The new methods described in the study provide rapid identification of brain sub-regions combined with measures of change in these regions across time. The methods require at least two brain scans to be performed on the same MRI scanner over a period of several months. The new research shows that changes in the brain's memory regions, in particular a region of the temporal lobe called the entorhinal cortex, offer sensitive measures of the early stages of the disease. 
