Agency officials yesterday told House Budget that they need extra funds for programs to catch people engaged in what Democrat Bob Etheridge called "robbing the government" — Giving Social Security another $213 million in fiscal 2008 for screening potentially excessive or fraudulent disability payments could result in $2 billion in future savings, chief actuary Stephen Goss told the panel. Law requires the agency to check about every three years to determine if people receiving disability insurance no longer need the payments or need reduced payments.

Social Security acts less frequently in cases where the disability seems more permanent. This year's budget resolution allows overall discretionary spending to be increased by $213 million for these reviews (known as continuing disability reviews, or CDRs) if appropriators initially include $264 million for that purpose. Both the House and Senate Labor-HHS spending bills include that extra spending.

The reviews are a good investment, with the government getting about $10 for every $1 spent, Goss said.Social Security spent $493 million on CDRs in fiscal 2005, generating an estimated $5.4 billion in savings with reduced Medicare and Medicaid costs factored in. But Social Security still has a "significant backlog" of reviews, Goss said. Congress in the 1990s appropriated special funds for fiscal 1996 through 2002 exclusively for CDRs, intending to clear up a backlog of 3 million to 4 million cases. Since fiscal 2002, requests totaling $1.75 billion in dedicated funding for CDRs have not been met, Goss said.

HHS Secretary Leavitt told the panel that every additional dollar spent on Medicare and Medicaid fraud investigations yields 13 to 15 times the amount invested. He said the administration this year had asked for $1.3 billion for a joint program with Justice to coordinate federal, state and local law enforcement activities to fight fraud. Timothy Hill, chief financial officer for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, noted Medicare is trying to pay more claims correctly the first time and thereby reduce costs associated with recovering excess payments. He noted Medicare's error rate in paying for fee-for-service care was 4.4 percent in fiscal 2006, down from 5.2 percent a year earlier.