Veterans' Benefits

Despite its responsibility to ensure accurate benefit payments, the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) continues to overpay veterans and their survivors hundreds of millions of dollars in compensation and pension benefits each year. VA has the ability to prevent millions of dollars in overpayments but has not done so because it has not focused on prevention. For example, VA does not use available information, such as when beneficiaries will become eligible for Social Security benefits, to prevent the overpayments from occurring. Furthermore, VA does not systematically collect, analyze, and use information on the specific causes of overpayments that will help it target preventive efforts.

GAO found that: (1) in 1994, VA detected about $372 million in overpayments to its beneficiaries mainly due to changes in income, particularly changes related to social security benefits; (2) although VA recovers about 30 percent of its overpayments, its outstanding overpayment balance was about $618 million in 1994; (3) many beneficiaries do not have the resources to repay the overpayments; (4) although VA has the capability to prevent many overpayments, it has not focused on overpayment prevention; (5) VA needs to better coordinate its beneficiary information with that of the Social Security Administration; and (6) VA does not systematically collect, analyze, and use information on the specific causes of overpayments to target its preventive efforts.

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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