Today, House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee Chairman John Larson (D-CT), Ways and Means Committee Member Vern Buchanan (R-FL), Senate Finance Committee Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-OR), and Finance Committee Member Bill Cassidy, M.D. (R-LA) introduced the Know Your Social Security Act.
The legislation will clarify the requirement for the Social Security Administration (SSA) to mail an annual Social Security Statement to all workers ages 25 and older with covered earnings, who are not receiving Social Security benefits. Since Fiscal Year 2011 SSA has failed to mail annual Statements to these Americans, citing limited operating budgets, even though in 1989 and 1990 Congress enacted requirements for SSA to provide a Statement annually. ...
The bill has been endorsed by:
AARP
Association of Mature American Citizens (AMAC)
Coalition for Paper Options
Justice in Aging
National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare
Paralyzed Veterans of America
Social Security Works
The Arc of the United States
The Senior Citizens League
If only the bar graph would show the mailed statements broken down to illustrate how many of them the recipient actually reviewed . . .
ReplyDelete(I'm pretty sure people who accessed their statement online actually looked at what they had accessed, but I'm much less confident about the paper statements.)
Can you imagine the future joy of the ID thieves breaking into mailboxes to steal these letters mailed to millions of folks? What might have been a good idea in the past (even a recent past) must be reconsidered in this more digital, less secure online age.
ReplyDeleteSSA leadership has for years now had the pipe dream of one day eliminating mailings, field offices, and probably even teleservice centers and going to 100% online services.
ReplyDeleteOur two core consumers are the elderly and the disabled, both of which are less computer-savvy (or even affluent enough to be online) than the average American.
This is a good step to overcorrect the agency's overeager push to online everything.
I don't want mine in the mail. Way too much potential for theft of my personal info. No thanks.
ReplyDeleteAll this talk about mail theft, what about the fact that SSA refuses to accept electronic signatures on 1696 forms requiring that they be sent through the mail. You guys don't want your information going through the mail but you keep in place a silly rule that violates at least two federal statutes forcing claimant's information to be sent through the mail.
ReplyDeleteThere should be an option for mailed or online statements. Most people do not know that they can access their statements online...
ReplyDeleteI think the vast majority of theft of personal information occurs online. So if security of personal information is the main concern and SSA wants people to have their statements, they should mail them and remove the online versions. The number of people who have access to your mail is quite small, especially if you have a locking mailbox. I also don't think the information on the Social Security statements is that sensitive (only the last 4 digits of the SSN, for example).
ReplyDelete