From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):
... Based on a recommendation in our August 2012 review ... SSA [Social Security Administration] implemented MNUP [Medicare Non-Utilization Project] in September 2013. SSA and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) exchange data, and CMS identifies Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance beneficiaries who are Medicare enrollees age 90 or older, are in current payment status, have a domestic address, and have not used Medicare Part s A or B for 3 years or longer. [The idea being that they may be dead.] ...
We reviewed a sample of 46 beneficiaries SSA interviewed via telephone during its 2013 MNUP. ...
During its 2013 MNUP, SSA incorrectly concluded via a telephone interview that 5 (11 percent) of our 46 sample beneficiaries were alive when, in fact, these beneficiaries were deceased at the time of its interviews. On average, the beneficiaries had died 12 years before SSA’s 2013 MNUP, but Agency personnel concluded they were alive. As such, we estimate d SSA overpaid 73 deceased beneficiaries about $16.5 million, which included over $5 million SSA paid after it incorrectly concluded these beneficiaries were alive. We also estimated that SSA would pay over $1 million in additional over payments to deceased MNUP beneficiaries over the next 12 months if it does not suspend or terminate their benefits. ...
SSA can strengthen its policy for interviewing MNUP beneficiaries. For example, we believe SSA should conduct face-to-face interviews of all MNUP beneficiaries to establish a baseline of individuals who are alive. By conducting face-to-face interviews, SSA could enhance its ability to ensure MNUP beneficiaries are alive and reduce its risk of individuals who falsely claim to be the legitimate beneficiary via telephone. ...
SSA did not agree to require face-to-face interviews for all MNUP beneficiaries. ...This is one of those OIG reports that assumes that the Social Security Administration has either unlimited staff or zero responsibilities other than reducing overpayments. Of course, you can't overpay someone if you never get around to putting them on benefits to begin with.
Require face-to-face interviews for individuals who are at least 90 years old? If the expectation is that such individuals (many of whom will be frail) would have to haul themselves into a crowded field office or face adverse consequences, the lack of humanity is appalling. I doubt that SSA would dispatch an interviewer to the beneficiary's residence, for a host of reasons. The news media would have an easy page one story, if not a series; small wonder that SSA disagreed with OIG, whose offices are located high within an Ivory Tower.
ReplyDeleteBack in the prehistoric times when offices had field reps whose beat was all things outside the office (nursing homes, disability reviews, assisting with studies or OIG requiring in situ reviews and much much more) this wouldn't be that hard. Not exactly a walk in the park, but the numbers living in single family homes must pale when compared to those in assisted living places. Plus they were in and out of places and were able to stay on top of changes. Now this stuff gets emailed or called in and buried.
ReplyDeleteContract this out - pay some contractor to visit the old folks who have not used medicare/Medicaid in years and the savings will be huge. Also punush the Shiite out of the heirs who kept the death secret
ReplyDeleteThis used to be called the Centenarian Project. Once the Field Reps were eliminated, this task fell to the management team in many offices. It used to require a face-to-face interview with ANYONE over 100, and most were done via personal contact. As a former DM I remember traveling the highways and byways of a fairly large service area making these contacts. Not a great use of management time. Most folks were hard of hearing so a phone interview wouldn't work. Whatever method is used to improve this, know that it, by definition, will take a large amount of staff time.
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ReplyDeleteI am curious, given the age range we are talking about, how many of these interviews were made approximately at your office on a monthly basis? It just seems like it would not pose a significant administrative burden.