Seeking to rein in the costs of a fast-growing entitlement program, the Social Security Administration plans to review the cases of more than 1.4 million Americans receiving disability benefits to determine who should be dropped from the program, officials said Saturday.
To carry out the task, the agency will seek a special $320 million appropriation from Congress that would allow it to review 700,000 disability cases each year for the next two years. The proposal, to be announced by the agency Monday, will be included in the details of President Clinton's 1997 budget, which are to be unveiled this week.Social Security officials expect the review to produce a "cessation rate" of 14 percent - meaning an estimated 196,000 recipients would be declared ineligible for benefits. Currently, 4 million people receive an average of $682 a month under the program.
Essentially the review will examine whether a beneficiary's medical condition has improved enough to permit a return to work.
Although the agency already conducts some eligibility reviews, the extra funds would allow it to double the rate.
The plan is almost certain to be controversial, however.
A similar large-scale review by the Reagan administration in the 1980s resulted in the review of more than 1.4 million cases. Although about 40 percent of beneficiaries were dropped from the rolls, nearly half of those were reinstated through appeals.
That review process produced such a furor that Congress declared a moratorium on it.