More than 1.6 million Americans live everyday with Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and indeterminate colitis, three chronic, incurable, and debilitating inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD) that cause crippling abdominal pain, persistent diarrhea, rectal bleeding, fever, and weight loss, among other symptoms. IBD often prevents patients from working or attending school. Frequently, they end up hospitalized with life-threatening complications.
Every year, the Social Security Administration holds hearings to add illnesses to its Compassionate Allowance List (CAL). We urge the White House to require the SSA to convene a hearing to add IBD to this list in order to expedite the approval of benefits for patients living with these chronic, incurable, and debilitating digestive diseases.