The Obama Administration is proposing stricter collection of workers' compensation payments data of Social Security beneficiaries.
Social Security-Budget Estimates and Related Information
Budget Overview, February 2015
"10. Establish Workers’ Compensation Information Reporting. Current law requires SSA to reduce an individual’s Disability Insurance (DI) benefit if he or she receives workers’ compensation (WC) or public disability benefits (PDB). SSA currently relies upon beneficiaries to report when they receive these benefits. This proposal would improve program integrity by requiring states, local governments, and private insurers that 23 administer WC and PDB to provide this information to SSA. Furthermore, this proposal would provide for the development and implementation of a system to collect such information from states, local governments, and insurers."
FY 2016 BUDGET OVERVIEW, p. 22
http://www.ssa.gov/budget/FY16Files/2016BO.pdf
With that information, the SSA can determine if the Federal Government is accurately calculating the Federal SSA/Workers' Compensation setoff.
The obvious inequity, cost shifting, exists in those states where a reverse offset is taken. In those states, ie. NJ, the workers' compensation insurance company takes the offset credit, and NOT the Federal Government (SSA).
The collection and publication of this data will verify the inequity between States and the cost shifting to the Federal government in some states and not others. A demand for the elimination of this inequity may result in the extinction of the Reverse Offset.
See: The Gift That Keeps Giving: The SSA Reverse Offset
