The American Association for Disability Policy Reform    

—   rehabilitation first   —

The Annual Cost of Disability Benefits**

The annual cost of Social Security disability benefits for 2018 is the sum of the following:

            Title II cash benefits:                                      158.4 billion

            Title XVI cash benefits:                                    54.2 billion

            Medicare benefits:                                           108.8 billion

            Medicaid benefits:                                           233.3 billion

                                                                                                   ____________

                                           Total cost:                        $554.6 billion

Since the numbers are estimations, we use a rounded $555 billion as the estimated total cost of the disability program for 2018.   This is a cost of $3,544 for each employed person in the United States.


**  Shown above is the cost of Social Security disability benefits with the Medicare and Medicaid obligations included.  
  According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, in 2005 there were at least 192 federal government programs which provided some sort of aid to the disabled [GAO-05-626].   The total cost of all of these is unknown.


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Last updated on 1/10/2020.