Social Security Disability

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has not met the legal requirements for conducting continuing disability reviews, which ensure that individuals receiving government disability benefits are eligible for them. Significant operational problems due to unprecedented increases in initial claims for social security benefits have prompted SSA to shift resources from conducting the reviews to processing these claims. Since fiscal year 1987, SSA has done only about half of the more than 2 million required reviews. Consequently, SSA will pay more than a billion dollars to beneficiaries who have improved enough to return to work. Further, the integrity of the trust funds is affected because thousands of ineligible beneficiaries remain on the disability rolls. In 1991, SSA streamlined its continuing disability review process by being more selective about which beneficiaries are reviewed. SSA is evaluating ways to further refine its process. GAO believes that SSA should (1) continue to examine ways to better target reviews for beneficiaries who may have medically improved and (2) increase the number of reviews beyond those planned.

GAO found that: (1) SSA did not perform enough CDR to meet statutory requirements in fiscal year (FY) 1987 through FY 1992 and, as a result, 1.1 million cases are past due; (2) the decision to perform fewer CDR than required costs the fund hundreds of millions of dollars while program integrity diminishes as ineligible beneficiaries continue to receive benefits; (3) in FY 1991, SSA revised its medical criteria for scheduling CDR to be more selective about which beneficiaries received CDR; and (4) SSA plans to perform too few CDR in FY 1993 and in each of the next several years.

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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