OIG And Washington Times On Overpayments And Administrative Finality

From The Washington Times, a right wing paper:

The Social Security Administration is resisting proposed rule changes aimed at fixing longstanding errors that have resulted in tens of millions of dollars in erroneous overpayments to beneficiaries.

More than 44,000 people have received approximately $140 million in extra, undeserved payments because of clerical and other errors by the Social Security Administration (SSA), according to recent estimates by the agency's inspector general.

What's more, the SSA has continued making overpayments even after learning of errors because of an internal rule known as "administrative finality."

Under the policy, the SSA cannot reduce benefits for disability and other beneficiaries after four years except in cases of fraud, even if they later learn that incorrect calculations are responsible for the overpayments.

"We believe that when SSA discovers errors in the payments to beneficiaries, the agency should correct them rather than continuing the errors in future benefit payments," Patrick P. O'Carroll Jr., inspector general for the SSA, wrote in a report sent to Congress and SSA officials last week.

The Office of Inspector General (OIG) study is available online. Carroll has seemed to be very much more hard line right wing than anyone else working at the Social Security Administration. We cannot know if he was the one to call the Washington Times, but that seems awfully likely. Certainly, he has not called the Washington Times about other studies OIG has done showing the underpayments to Social Security claimants.

In considering this study, I am reminded that on many occasions the idea has been proposed at Social Security to charge interest on overpayments owed to the Social Security Administration. Every time this comes up some alert person in the room always says, "But if we charge interest on the money they owe us, don't we have to pay interest on the money we owe them?" The idea always dies immediately after this question, since it is obvious that Social Security owes far more money than is owed to it. If Social Security does away with its administrative finality rules it will ultimately have to pay out far more than it will collect.