VA Improved Pension Program

Some Persons Get More Than They Should and Others Less Gao ID: HRD-80-61 August 6, 1980

Congress hoped that the law improving pensions for needy veterans, which went into effect January 1, 1979, would enable veterans and their survivors to receive benefits above the poverty level and help them avoid turning to welfare, such as the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) program.

Some couples who receive SSI and Veterans Administration (VA) pensions receive more in benefits from these two programs than other couples with similar or smaller incomes from other sources. The principal coordination of benefit information between VA and the Social Security Administration (SSA) occurs through automated data exchanges. Some changes are needed in this coordination to improve the accuracy of benefit payments by VA and to eliminate the exchange of unnecessary records. GAO estimated that $14.5 million of inaccurate pensions payments were made, principally in 1978. This consisted of: (1) $9.6 million in overpayments because the veterans or their spouses failed to report to VA receipt of social security benefits and because VA did not use the benefit data provided by SSA in the January 1979 data exchange; (2) $1.7 million in overpayments and $.3 million in underpayments substantially because one of the matching characteristics SSA used was not on the VA records; (3) $2 million in overpayments because veterans or their spouses did not accurately report receiving SSA black lung benefits; and (4) $.9 million in underpayments because VA pensioners improperly reported their SSI benefits as social security benefits. VA is providing SSA, in the quarterly data exchange, an estimated 5.1 million unneeded records because it did not use SSI indicators to limit the number of records provided. Additionally, VA is unnecessarily requesting SSA data for an estimated 618,700 known deceased veterans in the annual data exchange.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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