From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):
The thing that gets me is that if this report had said that claimants were being overpaid by $224 million, the House Social Security Subcommittee would hold a hearing and grill Social Security officials. They would insinuate that fraud must be involved. However, when it's $224 million in underpayments I'm sure the reaction will be "Meh."
Overpayments and underpayments are both important. They deserve equal treatment.
SSA needs to improve its controls to ensure it establishes the correct PIA [Primary Insurance Amount, the basis for computing how much a claimant is to be paid] for widow(er)s when deceased wage earners die before age 62. Based on our random sample, we estimated that SSA underpaid approximately $224 million to 25,309 widow(er)s....Social Security agreed that they need to do something about this problem.
The thing that gets me is that if this report had said that claimants were being overpaid by $224 million, the House Social Security Subcommittee would hold a hearing and grill Social Security officials. They would insinuate that fraud must be involved. However, when it's $224 million in underpayments I'm sure the reaction will be "Meh."
Overpayments and underpayments are both important. They deserve equal treatment.
Ironic. You would think politicians would be scrambling over each other for a chance to be seen as helping poor widows.
ReplyDeleteIts no longer a good thing to help the poor, aging, disabled, or minority. These are the days of One for One and all for ME! You thought the 80s were greedy!
ReplyDeleteSad but true. Tea party would probably fund an effort to unseat anyone with the gall to publicly announce support for their needy low-income constituents.
ReplyDeleteIt's not that difficult to get that payment correct for a CR. If the computer won't give a PIA via MCS, one just needs to request an estimate with the date of birth for the widow in the appropriate field. I am guessing in all of these cases the CR just used the MBR PIA for the deceased individual instead of running the comp to get the WINDEX PIA. I see it happen from newer CRs and ones that never learned comps in my office.
ReplyDeleteWho do you contact? My husband died at 59 I took survivor widow benefit at 60. No one explained anything to me. I am 69 I recently called ss to see what my personal retirement would be at 70. It seems to be much lower than I had calculated. Could be correct I don't know. How do you have things reviewed I cannot find a contact number regarding this underpayment issue, would like to know if correct PIA Windex calculation was used or if my SS was capped at filing for survivor benefits. Thank you
DeleteWell, $224 million sounds like a lot of money, but is it? I'm all for paying people what they deserve, but why can't reports like this give meaningful numbers? From the numbers given in the quote, the average is $8850 per widow(er). But over what time period is this? If this is over 20 years, that's $37/month, but it says the widow(er)s in the sample were currently being paid, so maybe they have been on Social Security an average of 10 years, which would mean they are underpaid by $74/month, which is a much bigger deal. The report also says that 14% of the sample is being underpaid. So why not state that 14% of widow(er)s were underpaid an average of $X/month, which is Y% of their benefits. That's a lot more meaningful than $224 million to 25,309 widow(er)s.
ReplyDeleteThis is not a complex computation, basic WIB comp. However if the staffing is not in place to provide adequate training and quality reviews, no computation is "basic". The problem is that the resources are not there.
ReplyDelete