Social Security and Medicare are distinct – are different structures, programs, and have administration mechanisms.
Thomas H. Stanton 03, former President of the Association for Federal Enterprise Risk Management and chaired Executive Organization and Management, 9/1/2003, “The Administration of Medicare: A Neglected Issue ”, scholarlycommons, https://scholarlycommons.law.wlu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1256&context=wlulr //IM
Many of Medicare's administrative shortcomings result from a significant disparity between its responsibilities and resources, both in personnel and dollars. At the inception of the Medicare program, providers expressed apprehension about governmental intervention into health care.4 As a result, the government created a different structure for administering Medicare than for administering Social Security. The Social Security Administration (SSA), with an in-house staff of 63,000,' processes Social Security payments directly to over forty-five million beneficiaries according to a schedule of benefits that is easy to administer. 6 By contrast, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), formerly the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA),7 currently has an in-house staff of fewer than 5,000. CMS, however, must administer a much more complex set of payments for Medicare services for almost as many beneficiaries through numerous third parties that together employ another 22,500 people.8