From the Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, CO:
Nine little numbers can kill you. Seriously. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust deadly.
That was what Ken Nesslage discovered to his untimely demise. RIP.
He was 77 and only trying to do the right thing when it happened, for heaven's sake.
He had gone to the Social Security Administration office out by the Grand Junction Regional Airport to notify them that his mother had died.
Roberta J. McDonough was 95 years, 1 month and 1 day old when she died on May 13 with her beloved small dog in her lap. Unfortunately, on July 1 it became apparent that the mortuary in Utah hadn't made the notifications for her that it was supposed to and it fell to Nesslage, the trustee for her estate.
A dutiful son to the end, he had all the proper paperwork. However, he was required to enter his own Social Security number into the system to get a ticket to be seen at the office window.
And with that nine-digit entry, Nesslage sent himself into the digital jaws of death.
Not realizing how bad off he was, though, he didn't go to the doctor for a week. He was told his Medicare was suspended.
As soon as he got home, he called Medicare.
"Are you sitting down, Mr. Nesslage?" the woman asked. "I'm going to tell you something that might disturb you greatly."
Then she told him he was dead. ...
He was back at the Social Security office in a hot second, much too upset to be a ghostly apparition.
But, alas, he was dead. As of May 13, in fact. The same day his mother died.
He was assured the error mixing up his mother's death with his own would be corrected.
However, in the days to come Nesslage began to realize it was much easier to die than to come back to life and found himself an odd member among the walking dead all headed downhill. ...
Still, he attempted to refill his blood pressure medication. His Medicare remained suspended.
Credit card — denied. ...
Meanwhile, Judy received another letter, this time from Social Security, telling her what her new monthly payments would be and that she would receive $255 for her husband's burial expenses. ...
"I'm starting to stink really bad. No embalming fluid," Nesslage deadpanned. ...
On his fourth trip to the office on July 26 — everyone there now knows him by sight and certainly by name — he got a letter indicating he had been reported dead in error. ...
5 comments:
This is why I avoid calling the national call center at all costs. Last I checked, they require you to provide your social security number, not the number you are calling about (i.e. the claimant/client).
It's fun to poke fun at these sorts of mistakes. But considering the volume of people SSA deals with, as well as the frequency with which ID theft occurs, lack of adequate funding and outdated infrastructure, it's pretty remarkable the agency manages to avoid making this sort of mistake more often. Also, given the gravity of the consequences, and the relative ease with which an individual can represent himself as someone else (we aren't born with our SSNs coded into our genetic material, after all), I think we should all be thankful SSA moves a little slowly (I'd say "deliberately") to take someones word on the issue.
Our office made CSRs who killed people off erroneously fix the problem. They made changes to the system in the last two years to make it less accountable (now you can't see the code of the person who did the death input, and even RO can't see it). Which I'm against on principle, but at least it changes our policy, which I always thought was dumb.
If you can't get something right the first time, why should I trust you to fix it?
@2:04
Hmm...at first glance, knowing why caused the issue seems reasonable, but I agree, maybe it should be fixed by actual experts, not whoever screwed it up in the first place. I suppose the best solution would be to track who made the error and teach them how not to make the error in the future, and in the mean time, have experts fix it.
I think it should be a two part(y) system to decide if someone is dead or not. By having two CSR's sign off on a death, if in fact the death did not occur, the error SHOULD be picked up by one of the CSR's, if not, then I guess it's just hopeless at that point. Maybe only let the high-up's knock people off? I just find it hard to believe a call center representative can actually declare someone "dead" without any oversight! Talk about a mess! That's kind of a big deal... life and death, actually.
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