From
Dean Baker writing for Huffington Post:
The media have been rightly focusing their attention on the long waiting
lists for veterans seeking medical care, and even worse, the Department
of Veteran's Affairs cover-up. ...
Unfortunately the VA system is not the only part of the government where
essential services may be threatened by cutbacks. The Social Security
Administration (SSA) has recently disclosed plans for
a major downsizing that will result in the closing of many more of its
field offices. The goal is to handle the bulk of Social Security's
requests, questions, and complaints through the Internet....
Last year, the Washington Post ran a major front-page article
over the fact that 0.006 percent of Social Security benefits in the
prior three years had been paid out to dead people. Of course the Post
never told readers that the amount in question amounted to less than one
hundredth of one percent of benefit payments. Instead it highlighted
the size of the mistaken benefits, $133 million, as though it had
uncovered a momentous sum that the program was paying out in error.
There
is no reason to expect the opponents of Social Security to be any more
honest in the future. Every mistake that the program makes will be
highlighted. For this reason, it is not only essential that we minimize
the instances where people don't get the benefits to which they are
entitled; we should also be concerned that the SSA has the capacity to
keep a lid on improper payments.
SSA is already tremendously
efficient compared to its private sector counterparts. Administrative
costs for the system as whole are just 0.9 percent of benefits. The
administrative costs for just the retirement and survivors' portion of
the program are 0.5 percent of benefits. Privatized systems in places
like the United Kingdom or Chile have costs that are twenty times as
high.
1 comment:
Dean Baker is good. He has a blog in which he comments on economic stories in the media:
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/beat-the-press/
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