Administrative Burden

An alternative way to reduce learning costs about SNAP among older adults already exists but is not being used. The Social Security Administration (SSA) has interactions with older adults on a regular basis and could offer a more systematic effort to inform those who might be eligible. SSA has ready access to benefit information for individuals and married couples, allowing them to providing reliable case-by-case information. If a total family benefit was below the food stamp eligibility criteria, the SSA could mail information about the SNAP program to potentially eligible older adults. Medicare could also play a more active role. Because older adults have such high out-of-pocket medical care costs and Medicare has information on these costs, they could selectively mail out information about SNAP to individuals with significant health-care expenditures. Even more effectively, administrative linkages between Medicaid and SNAP databases could be more clear to assist caseworkers in verifying medical expenses. 73 More broadly, public-private partnerships could be enlisted to raise awareness of the program among older adults. For example, SSA could partner with the AARP