From the Office of Evaluation Sciences:
… Survey data from the National Institutes of Health-supported Health and Retirement Study suggest that less than 60 percent of individuals age 65 or older who may be eligible for SSI receive the benefit, and administrative data from SSA suggest that uptake may be substantially lower.
SSA identified over 4 million individuals age 65-80 who were potentially eligible for SSI, and sent one of four letter variations to a sub-sample of them. …Individuals were randomly assigned to receive one of four letter types or to a control condition (i.e., no targeted information about potential SSI eligibility): (1) a basic letter; (2) a letter which states the maximum benefit; (3) a letter which states that applying is simple; (4) a letter combining the maximum benefit element and the “applying is simple” element. SSA sent 100,000 of each letter variation. …Of beneficiaries who received a letter, 6.0 percent applied for SSI in the nine months after the letters were sent out, compared with 1.0 percent of beneficiaries who did not receive a letter. Similarly, 2.3 percent of beneficiaries who received a letter were awarded SSI during this time, compared with 0.5 percent of beneficiaries who did not receive a letter, an increase of 340%.
Why not do this? I'll answer my own question. Social Security can't handle the caseload it has now, much less a big jump in SSI claims.
Anecdotally, about 75% of the claims I’ve taken for people who received the letters haven’t qualified primarily due to resources. Some have covered pensions not subject to WEP.
ReplyDeleteQuite a few just don’t want to give the government access to their personal information.
Bottom line is whatever letter is sent, the overwhelming majority of recipients don't bother to respond.
ReplyDeleteDon't know who or what could change this. Perhaps coordinating with local Welfare Agencies might help since any assistance might reduce their costs for other benefits like food stamps or rental assistance.
Ah, government administrative testing on the elderly. Interesting. Why not just send a letter telling them what they qualify for (or that they don't qualify) instead of "Let's see how THIS works!". I'm with 10:08 on this. Why get SSI if one is well set monetarily for retirement? A lot of boomers were housewives. If their husbands worked their whole lives, there's some good pensions out there. Experimenting with letters? Just send them a letter saying "We have noticed that you may be eligible for.....etc..etc..".
ReplyDeleteA study of predetermined conclusions and doubtful results. Reminds one of OIG...
ReplyDelete12:26, part of the issue is that SSA doesn't know if someone is eligible for SSI and for how much until the person applies. They don't know what's in your IRA or if you have a life insurance policy or if you get a pension or own a boat. So they can send letters to people who get low DI benefits but only some of them are going to qualify.
ReplyDeleteMy understanding is that SSA did do a few more rounds of sending letters and have plans to do more, but when the phones got bad they paused it because they didn't want to send out letters saying "call this special number!" and then have nobody answer that number. Not sure if they've restarted them.
SSA is currently sending letters like this. That's why SSI aged apps are up while all other apps are down.
ReplyDelete