Veterans' Benefits

VA Needs Death Information From Social Security to Avoid Erroneous Payments Gao ID: HRD-90-110 July 27, 1990

Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO determined whether the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) made substantial erroneous payments to the accounts of deceased beneficiaries under its compensation and pension programs.

GAO found that: (1) if surviving relatives do not report beneficiary deaths to VA in a timely manner, substantial erroneous payments can result; (2) in April 1989, VA paid pension benefits for 1,212 veterans whom Social Security Administration (SSA) records reported had died at least 4 months earlier, resulting in potential erroneous annual payments of $5.7 million; (3) VA paid compensation and pension benefits to about 227,000 beneficiaries who did not have survivors' names and social security numbers on file; (4) VA officials had unsuccessfully negotiated with SSA to gain access to available death information; and (5) VA will continue to make erroneous benefit payments unless all beneficiaries are required to provide social security numbers to VA.

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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