Administrative Burden

SSA staff help individuals enroll in Medicare, its associated programs to help participants pay for out-of-pocket health-care costs, and in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Approximately 1,200 field offices are spread across the United States, staffed by eighty thousand employees. They vary significantly in size, smaller offices in rural areas serving fewer than twenty people a day to larger offices in cities serving over five hundred. 71 In aggregate, demand for help either in-person or via phone inquiries remains strong. In 2015, field offices served forty million visitors.