Thumbnail Image
Publication

Misplaced Priorities: How the Social Security Administration Sacrificed Quality for Quantity in the Disability Determination Process

House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform
Abstract
In this report, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform focused investigated problems within the disability appeals process, when Administrative Law Judges (ALJs) review appealed cases and decide whether or not to award benefits. The report finds that the SSA made no effort to monitor whether its ALJs were issuing policy-compliant decisions prior to the first publication of ALJ disposition data. It also documents that the SSA failed to properly oversee its ALJs because of the agency's singular focus on moving cases through the system as quickly as possible regardless of the quality of those decisions. This has resulted in taxes to finance federal disability programs being squandered because of agency mismanagement that has led to hundreds of billions of dollars of improper benefit awards.
Date
2014-12-18
Document Type
House Majority Staff Report
Serial Number
Document Length
54 pages
Congress
113
Show all metadata
Files
Thumbnail Image
2014-12-18_R-How_the_SSA_Sacrificed_Quality_for_Quantity-113C.pdf
Adobe PDF, 1.48 MB
URI
https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14300/1043
Relation
DOI
Keywords
Staff Reports
PAP Major Code
13: Social Welfare
PAP Minor Code
1304: Assistance to the Disabled
Related Hearings
Press Releases and Contextual Information
https://web.archive.org/web/20230614215530/https://oversight.house.gov/report/misplaced-priorities-social-security-administration-sacrificed-quality-quality-disability-determination-process/
Collections
House Oversight Committee