The move is part of an continuing effort by the federal government to reduce paper and cut costs by going electronic for all sorts of things, including savings bonds, unemployment benefits and Social Security benefit statements.
Michael J. Astrue, the commissioner of Social Security, said the agency had cut back distribution of annual earnings and benefit statements and had suspended plans to open eight hearing offices that would tackle a huge backlog of appeals by people seeking disability benefits.
Mr. Reiter has been insured by Aetna for the last 10 years and said he had generally "just grinned and bore it" when his benefit statements showed the insurer was paying only a fraction of his actual out-of-network medical bills.
The dependent variables were obtained from the response to the benefit statements 1 13, as described above.
The responses to the seven remaining benefit statements were also estimated in the ordered probit, but are not reported here.
Educational benefit statements, the documents local authorities use to set out how a school closure will lead to an improvement in pupils' education, must improve in quality and will continue to be a very important part of closure proposals.
