The U.S. Social Security Administration has long had a practice of visiting beneficiaries when they reach extreme old age. Japan's recent experience shows why this is a good idea. From Reuters:
Revelations last week that police had found the mummified remains of a man thought to have been Tokyo's oldest resident at 111 but actually dead for 30 years shocked a country facing the challenge of a rapidly aging population. ...More reports of missing centenarians this week showed that their whereabouts were unknown or their family members were unaware of what had happened to them.
U.S. Social Security used to visit people when they turned 100. That has now been pushed up to 103.
4 comments:
The year before I retired, the "centenarian project" involved visiting a lot of people. It involved a TON of staff time (I was the DM of a large district, so we had a quite a few of these folks)and we found relatively few benes in need of a payee and none who were deceased. I think it's a waste of time, particularly when the offices are flooded with claimants and the phones go unanswered.
If there is a societal need to make sure our centenarians are in good health, that's the job for 1) police 2) social services 3) dept of aging. SSA has far more important tasks than this one especially when it would fit into the portfolio of so many other organizations.
This was a tongue and cheek post. Lay off the coffee guys...
The idea is great to visit the old folks, since I have dealt with sleezeballs that like to cash their dead relatives' checks. I think the MEDMaTCH and Medicare Cases where it is obvious that no one is using their health care benefits is a much easier to trace red flag that there is fraud. Unfortunately, like most things these days at SSA it is an unfunded mandate, like the Medicare Part D subsidy workload and IRMAA.
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