Social Security

Effects of Budget Constraints on Disability Program Gao ID: HRD-88-2 October 28, 1987

In response to a congressional request, GAO reviewed state disability determination services (DDS) to: (1) evaluate the effects of budget constraints that the Social Security Administration (SSA) imposed on state agencies' operations; and (2) determine whether SSA productivity standards were appropriate.

GAO found that budget reductions: (1) limited the number of continuing disability reviews that SSA required the states to do in fiscal year (FY) 1987; (2) cost the Disability Insurance Trust Fund more than $200 million in unnecessary benefit payments; (3) reduced state agencies' work-years for FY 1987 by 3.7 percent; (4) created a backlog of over 300,000 medical-improvement-expected (MIE) cases, which SSA did not expect to complete without the use of funds from a contingency reserve; and (5) could affect the quality of disability determinations. GAO also found that: (1) SSA plans to increase the overall DDS operating budget by $13 million, but will reduce DDS staff by 3.5 percent; (2) the SSA productivity measurement system did not provide accurate or uniform productivity comparisons among DDS; and (3) although SSA developed a Cost-Effectiveness Measurement System which would correct most of the weaknesses in its current system, it did not consider the type of impairment in each DDS case mix.

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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