I had posted recently about the problems a widow faced after she reported her husband’s death to Social Security and a Social Security employee recorded it as if the husband had died a year earlier than he did. Now comes a second report of another widow who dutifully reported her husband’s death and another Social Security employee recorded it as if both husband and wife had died instead of the husband!
These reports could be signs of a systems problem.
Florida is an electronic death reporting state. Under the EDR process, there was absolutely no need for her to immediately contact Social Security. This is really a problem of SSA needing to do better (or any) outreach to medical facilities like hospice so that surviving spouses know what is expected of them and what is not. Simple pamphlets or signage is sufficient and cheaper than the time spent handling these cases.
ReplyDeleteSSA needs to consider only suspending beneficiaries for death who died in an EDR state instead of terminating to avoid these scenarios.
I'm curious if it was due to the call center requiring your personal SSN, not necessarily the number you are calling about. Unless they've changed it, last time I called, I gave my personal, and had to repeat 3 times I was calling in regard to a client's case, not my own. I imagine it would be relatively simple to just accidentally attribute the details of the call to the caller's SSN.
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