Disability money

More than 10 million Americans receive disability benefits worth approximately $60 billion annually through Supplemental Security Income or Disability Insurance. The Social Security Administration is charged with ensuring that only those people who are truly deserving get the benefits, but the administration has fallen three years behind in its disability reviews and has little chance of catching up.

With staffing levels at the administration unlikely to change dramatically in the next few years, the General Accounting Office has recommended that the review system be changed. That’s a good idea.

The GAO estimates that the administration is 4 million cases behind in its workload and that the expected workload will increase during the next several years, threatening to push oversight of these benefits back even further. Currently, the administration tries to review every benefits case in its files. In a report to the Senate Special Committee on Aging, however, the GAO recommends that the administration give priority to cases that have the greatest potential for medical improvement and conduct reviews of a random sample of all other beneficiaries to maintain the programs’ integrity and remind recipients that someone is minding the tax dollars.

This change alone, according to the report, would provide for a one-time savings of $1.4 billion. Sen. William Cohen, chairman of the Senate committee, pointed out that the benefits programs have undergone unprecedented growth in the last decade despite medical and rehabilitative advances and an emphasis on hiring people with disabilities. “I continue to believe that disability payments must be made available to those who need them, and no one should be unfairly removed from the rolls,” he said. “But major changes can be made in the continuing disability review process to target those who are no longer eligible for benefits or who could get help to return to work.”

This is not just penny-pinching. Taxpayers deserve to have their money spent fairly, and people who truly qualify for these programs deserve to have the integrity of the programs protected. The reputation for being well-run helps enormously at budget time. The GAO report should get the attention of the full Congress, which next session could place the recommended changes first on its things-to-do list.