From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):
Generally, SSA [Social Security Administration] attempted to collect overpayments regardless of the amount. ...
SSA collects data on the average costs to collect RSI [Retirement and Survivors Insurance], DI [Disability Insurance], and SSI [Supplemental Security Income] overpayments via its Cost Analysis System ( CAS ). ... However, the average cost to collect an SSI overpayment as reported in CAS represents the cost of a single action taken to collect an SSI overpayment during a FY [Fiscal Year]. Therefore, the average cost to collect an SSI overpayment does not represent the cost of collecting the overpayment when multiple actions are required. This results in an understatement of the average cost to collect an SSI overpayment when multiple collection actions are required. ...
Based on our analysis using average cost data from CAS, we estimated SSA spent over $323 million to collect low-dollar overpayments in FYs 2008 through 2013. Using SSA’s overpayment collection percentages for these FYs, we estimated SSA collected approximately $109.4 million of the low-dollar overpayments. This resulted in SSA spending over $213.6 million more than it collected ....
6 comments:
A fine example of "smack them with the right hand, then smack them with the left hand". How many IG reports have blasted SSA for overpayments existing at all, for unavoidable overpayments like those caused with GK and appeals with payment continuation, with conclusions of how many dollars SSA is leaving on the table and now essentially blaming SSA for going after these overpayments when it costs more to get the money back than the debt is worth. If you don't go after it, your mismanaging public funds. If you do go after it, you are mismanaging public funds. But in either case, the IG gets to say I told you so and comes out looking brighter than the average fed. It would be so wonderful if at some point the IG were made responsible for taking the actions they recommend just to see if they are all words or could actually pull it off better.
@ 7:17 - spot on!
Look, I believe the SSA is trying to stop fraud. So let's do this: 1.) Get the DEATH ROLLS IN ORDER. And 2.) If someone walks into the their local SSA office and claims they are NOT dead...for the love of God, BELIEVE THEM, and fix their stuff on the spot!!!
Two choices...overhaul the process of collecting SSI overpayments so they can be processed efficiently both in cost and procedure or just give out free money to recipients in the form of overpayments too small to collect and chalk it up to charity I guess. Complaining does nothing if we aren't addressing the issues. Oh wait, it's the government so that's normal!!!
The problem as I see it, we have close to a million CDR's waiting to be done. Most of these will be denials or affirmations whichever you want to call them. Due to benefit continuation almost all of them will lead to overpayments. Now supposedly, we save $10 for every $1 spent doing CDR's. However, we are now spending $2-3 for every dollar of overpayment we collect. How about doing away with benefit continuation? If these people have nothing to live on and need the benefit continuation, how in the heck can we ever collect anything back form them?? This is like Catch-22..
Part of the issue that people do not understand is that SSI overpayment collection is partly an enforcement action. That is, it is to make the recipient cognizant of the fact that overpayments will be taken out of their checks. What if every time someone stole $ 50.00 from a store, the govt reimbursed the store owner instead of spending thousands of dollars to prosecute the thief? Low dollar crime would be rampant. Same thing with SSI.
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