Jun 22, 2006

Payments to Dead People

Social Security has had a problem over the years with paying benefits to people who have died. Great strides have been made in dealing with this problem and the number of cases of improper payments to deceased individuals has been dramatically decreased, but some problems remain. Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has recently compared the Department of Veteran's Affairs list of deceased veterans against the Social Security benefit rolls and found Social Security benefits being paid to 228 deceased veterans. Since the VA itself cannot be aware of all veterans' deaths and since most Social Security benefits recipients are not veterans, the true scope of the problem has to be quite a bit bigger.

No comments: