From Laurence Kotlikoff writing for Forbes:
Mistakes will happen. The problem at Social Security is the lack of staff to correct mistakes coupled with systems set up to be extremely aggressive about collecting overpayments.
... Eighty-one year-old, Dolores Cooper, is being financially tortured by Social Security for Social Security's own mistake. On September 19, 2018, Dolores called Social Security to tell them her husband, Jimmy, had died two days earlier. The Social Security staffer mistakenly typed into the system that Jimmy had died not on September 17, 2018, but on September 17, 2017.
One week after Dolores' call, she received a notice from SSA (the Social Security Administration) that Jim had been overpaid by $22,533 and that she, Dolores, needed to make repayment.What happened? The typo triggered Social Security's computer system to decide Jimmy had been paid benefits for a year when he was actually dead, which, of course, he wasn't. Dolores called SSA the next day — on September 27th. After waiting 1.5 hours for someone to come on the phone, she spoke with an Aileen. Aileen found the mistake and told Dolores to take Jimmy's death certificate to the Modesto, CA office. Aileen said it would take up to two months to fix the problem — so not to worry. On October 5th, Dolores took the death certificate to the Modesto office, waited three hours and spoke to Mike Wylie.
To quote her son, Kim, "Mike assured my mom he would make sure the issue was corrected. In the meantime, my mom started receiving tens of thousands of dollars of Jimmy’s medical bills as the incorrect date of death had propagated into the Medicare system and they stopped paying Jimmy’s medical bills and were asking for repayment of their payments. ...
On October 17, SSA sent Dolores two notices. The first stated that they'd used $17,226 of her benefits to recover part of the overpayment, but that she still owed $5,307. Social Security had retroactively activated Dolores' widows benefit to their incorrect start date, namely a year before Jimmy actually died. Those widow's benefits, which hadn't been paid were, SSA said as cryptically as possible, being used to cover $17,226 of her bill.
The second notice dated October 17 notice claimed that SSA, to quote Kim, "... paid Dolores $24,324 for September 2017 through August 2018 but they should have only paid her $10,197 so she need to refund $14,127 within 30 days. The notice also said the total amount of overpayment was $8,820. So in the same notice two different amounts were given ($14,127 and $8,820) and on the same day another notice stated $5,307."
On November 5 SSA made a direct deposit in Dolores' checking account of $8,649. On November 7 the SSA sent a notice stating the deposit of $8,649 should have been for $3,342, so there was an overpayment of $5,307 that needed to be returned. After repeated calls to find out where to send the check, Dolores sent, on November 23, a cashier’s check by priority mail. According to USPS tracking it was delivered on November 27. ...The story goes on but you get the ugly picture. What happened isn't a fluke. It's what I would have predicted would happen after the initial mistake was made. The two month prediction on how long it would take to correct the mistake was about what I would have predicted although I would warn a client that it could certainly take longer.
Mistakes will happen. The problem at Social Security is the lack of staff to correct mistakes coupled with systems set up to be extremely aggressive about collecting overpayments.
7 comments:
Just wonder if you have the same animus for the IRS? They make SSA look like warm fuzzy puppies when it comes to recovery.
When you automatically send probably 750 million checks/direct deposits in a year there has to be quite a bit of automation. It's great when all is well but when someone screws up and puts in the wrong year, or even month of death, it can create a big mess. Of course benefits will be sent for the past year to the widow as if the husband has been dead the past year. You'd want that if he actually had been dead, no? The price one pays for great automation when the data is correct is a total screw up when the data put in is incorrect. It sounds as if you wish that all these steps weren't automatic, that someone would look at each one to make sure the money going out, the letters going out, etc are correct before actually being released.
Automation is fine, but errors should be fixable. Social Security was notified on September 27 that there was a mistake. There should have been a way to enter that information into the system and at least stop everything until someone could fix it. (Of course, it would be better if fixing the mistake was also automated.) And the widow should not have been required to do anything after she notified Social Security of the error. Why should she have to travel to an office and wait to show them a death certificate? She didn't have to show them one when she originally notified them of the death. And why don't states send death certificate information to Social Security automatically? That way, everything would be fine as long as the death certificate is correct, and it's less trouble for everyone.
This lady should call her Congressman and Senators. Their staff will come down on SSA and get the problem corrected.
Not quite sure the CR names needed to be used in the article, especially since some of these contacts are not even part of the mistake. Quite harsh, really.
These reps have no idea what a CR is or what they deal with on a daily basis. From the way they talk here they think the only thing the Agency does is disability claims and pay reps. The ignorance is absolutely staggering! They sure like to get in a moral outrage, but they don't understand that they are a HUGE part of the problem.
9:29 AM . Approving more at DDS would help both of our "problems." Yo want a REAL problem? Try living on a small pension while waiting on this system for 5 years!!!
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