From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):
... To recover an outstanding SSI overpayment, SSA can withhold the entire prior-month underpayment due a recipient up to the balance of the overpayment. SSA defines underpayments that are due for months before the month SSA identifies them as prior-month underpayments. ...
SSA did not always follow its policy of withholding SSI prior-month underpayments from outstanding SSI overpayments. Specifically, SSA did not appropriately withhold more than 6,000 prior-month underpayments to recover outstanding overpayments. This occurred because SSA employees did not take the necessary manual actions in SSA’s systems to ensure overpayment recovery. Had SSA followed its policy, we estimate it could have recovered approximately $44 million in outstanding overpayments from nearly 125,000 prior-month underpayments it paid to SSI recipients during CYs 2015 and 2016. ...
3 comments:
Do less with less.
File this under additional costs of underfunding agency staffing.
If SSA had state of the art computer programs it 'should' be easy as pie to hit some buttons as you effectuate payment and if there is an outstanding debt it would be offset. But we have buy crap that is old and needs many manual steps. This costs us millions and will screw future recipients out of their just amounts. We got what we paid for.
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