Our objective was to identify Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance (OASDI) beneficiaries whose payments may have been affected by State or local government pensions. We limited our review to those beneficiaries who may have been receiving State or local government pensions and for whom the Social Security Administration (SSA) had not determined whether the Windfall Elimination Provision (WEP) or Government Pension Offset (GPO) applied. ...
Based on the results of our review, we estimate SSA overpaid about $623.8 million in OASDI benefits to approximately 24,900 beneficiaries because Agency staff did not apply WEP and GPO provisions to the OASDI benefits. If SSA does not take action to identify and correct these payment errors, we estimate it will pay about $869.9 million in future overpayments over the beneficiaries’ lifetimes ...
This was based upon a small sample. I suppose these auditors know what they are doing but they are basing a projection of almost a billion dollars on 13 or so cases. To a layman, that seems questionable.
12 comments:
WEP cases are complex and time consuming, with SSA backlogs we don't have time for everything.
Need overtime. Field offices were told we would have some in December then notified no OT, it was cancelled for some reason.
Of all the money saving measures that Congress enacted in the 80's (the last time we had a funding "crisis") this was the most unwieldy. It involves a recalculation of the PIA after entitlement (because the recalculation does not become effective until entitlement to the government pension). Because the recalculation involves a significant reduction in the PIA, because claimants rarely report receipt of the government pension timely, and because even when receipt is reported the recalculation takes time, this provision almost always results in a huge overpayment.
Another weird aspect of the WEP law is that it only applies to benefits paid while the wage earner is alive. After death, the PIA is supposed to revert to the non-WEP PIA. Of course, the OIG rarely audits underpayment issues but I'm willing to be there are tens of thousands of widows who are being significantly underpaid because they are still being paid on the artificially low WEP-PIA.
There are programs that detect if the a survivor benefit is being paid with a WEP PIA on the record, so there are probably only current death issues where the wage earner has passed away in the past month that have an invalid PIA on the record.
More often, though, is when government pension offset (the sister of WEP), is on the spouse's record but nobody bothered to impose WEP or develop if an exclusion applies and vice versa WEP is on the record but not GPO.
I know many CAs how have charts showing when a claimant must elect their pension depending on the agency payer. NH stating he is 82 and has not taken his pension in Ohio? Not with OPERS.
Also: It is government pension offset that is the most time consuming from a field office/PSC view, not WEP.
GPO is a whole other issue. Part of the problem is the inability to quickly enter the new pension amount into the computer. Even when COLAs are reported timely, it typically takes SSA 6 months to recalculate the GPO. GPO beneficiaries are overpaid every year when their government pension is increased due to a COLA. And, because the overpayments are small, they are usually waived to to administrative convenience.
By the way Charles, don't your blog entries have an automatic spellcheck?
"Windfall Elimitation Provision Problems"
Interesting post! It seems to me that they need to check their social security benefit calculator to make sure everyone is getting the amount they need.
Oooo an ad bot. Haven't seen one of those on here in awhile.
OT, I would also agree that the sample is too small for these kinds of estimates. And why didn't they look for underpayments as well as overpayments? And isn't this something the GAO should be looking at? Wouldn't it be better for OIG to be looking for fraud? I is confused....
Agree with NoSaj. This stuff should be done by outside auditors, which would be GAO. (Sorry, GOP privatizers, Price Waterhouse isn't equipped). I've been a part of GAO audits of various SSA functions, and those folks are some of the most professional Feds I've ever dealt with.
Keeping things like this in-house is a joke. OIG should be going after claimant/beneficiary/employee fraud rather than trying to address program effectiveness. They're out of their element.
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The figures may in fact be correct.SSA's policy of treating most post entitlement items as low priority almost guarantees an overpayment in every GPO COLA case.The claimant reports timely but the action date for the payment center may be 300+ days later. By time the adjustment occurs then another COLA has happened and the process begins again.
Any Field Office Manager could have identified these problems and saved millions. But SSA never really asks Managers for this type of input.
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