From Incorrect Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance Benefit Payment Computations that Resulted in Overpayments, an audit report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):
... SSA makes incorrect benefit computations when employees enter the wrong information into SSA’s systems or incorrectly calculate benefits. Benefits are incorrectly computed when employees or systems base calculations on inaccurate information. When SSA detects an error or obtains accurate information, it corrects the benefits and establishes an overpayment or issues an underpayment. We focused our review on overpayments. ...
We estimate SSA could have avoided approximately 73,000 overpayments totaling more than $368 million if it had effective controls over benefit-computation accuracy. SSA’s controls did not always ensure the Agency calculated benefits accurately. ...
OK, those overpayments aren't good but what about the other side of the coin. Wasn't Social Security as likely to underpay claimants as overpay them? How many claimants were underpaid and by how much? Isn't that as least as important?
This report is a microcosm of OIG's priorities and not just under the current Inspector General -- an intense focus on overpayments with only a limited interest in underpayments, which are at least as big a problem.
As much as I love bashing OIG they do address underpayments. But generally when the situation "proves" how smart they are or how "stupid" SSA is. But this is an example of by ignoring the underpayment, it makes the situation appear worse. If for example $200 million in underpayments were due, then the net OP would be $168 million. Of course if that were the situation, incorrect payments would be $568 million, comprised of $368 million overpaid and $200 million underpaid. It's hardly ever mentioned that when looked at overall, they are focusing on the gap between (just an example, I'm sure numbers actually exist) 98.5% payment accuracy and 100%. A worthy goal yet reports slanted to ignore accuracy and make the agency incompetent.
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ReplyDeleteSSA can always issue a retro underpayment if it is discovered one is due.
Even after an overpayment is discovered, getting the money back from the claimant is problematical.
Claimants can file for recon, waiver, or just refuse to pay it back until SSA gradually recovers it from monthly benefits.
If they are in dib cess status that makes it even more difficult to recover an overpayment.
Charles - the date you are looking for is located here: https://www.ssa.gov/finance/2020/Payment%20Integrity.pdf
ReplyDeleteTables contain the data and % by total and program.
@7:16
ReplyDeleteThe existence of some underpayments does not cancel out the overpayment. The reason we generally focus on this blog on underpayment, is that the claimant is obviously less capable of bearing the economic strain of wrongfully withheld benefits, whereas the trust funds are quite resilient despite overpayments existing. Also the ratio is roughly 70/30 last I checked with underpayments wrongfully occurring far more often than overpayments.
Also, underpayments and overpayments do not somehow cancel each other out, except I suppose in the rare instance where somehow an overpayment or underpayment was determined for an individual, when in fact it was the opposite. Regardless, they are both error. That's why when reports are generated, they focus on one and not the other.
Everybody should read the actual report. frankly, in the cases they described as causing overpayments, the only thing I could think was OMG, what kind of system are they running.
ReplyDeleteThe overwhelming number of transactions should amount to no more than entering the proper dates and the payment information should come from the records in the system. Some transactions are complicated, such as WC offsets and GPO offsets but again, once the proper information is entered, it should be automatic. It seems most of the reported errors involve someone being entitled on multiple records. But, this has been problem for years. Why have the systems people not figured out a way to automate that calculation as well. And, while their act it, be able to notify people when they could be entitled to a greater benefit on another record.
And, they use multiple systems to input data based on employee preferences. Really.
And they have organized way to follow up on systemic errors and make corrections going forward. Again, really.
Frankly, I have become convinced that operations management in Social Security is a complete failure, from these issues to phones that don't work. The operations people need to be replaced by people who actually know how to get a large system to work.
The simple fact of the matter is that the agency has always had the capability to fix this particular problem if they wanted to. Probably for a fraction of the total cost of those overpayments to boot.
ReplyDeleteHow? By creating an actual integrated computations package for Title II that does everything (well, everything that can actually be automated, anyway), instead of depending upon 50+ different piecemeal automated computations and Excel spreadsheets which haven't been updated in the 30 years I have worked for the agency.
However, agency management is simply too cheap to do it. They'd rather waste billions of dollars on boondoggle projects that don't accomplish anything beyond getting them big bonuses while at the saem time destroying employee productivity.
Every time the mentally deficient side-show freaks running this agency implement something, I just cringe because it now will take twice as long to accomplish anything as it took before they and their brown-nosed sycophants messed with it.
I really need to retire again, as SSA isn't a mentally healthy place to work.
@4:48
ReplyDeleteAt this point the management/training problem almost seems harder to solve for than dramatic IT improvements that help eliminate alot of user errors, and AI programs that recognize common issues automatically without human intervention (though I would not want computer program taking action on issues like over-payments without human verifying).
Though I also worry that any IT improvements will be sabotaged by incompetent management that do not even seem to recognize what problems they are solving for.
These management and staffing issues seem to be proliferating across many federal agencies. Congress really needs to look into serious reforms across the board--though I am not confident politicians could come up with better solutions.
Years ago, before I retired from SSA, we had a workload of SSI underpayments that no one paid any attention to. These underpayments had a diary date, but for some reason, the date changed once a month to the current date, so on paper, this underpayment workload never got old, according to the way management divided up workloads. The validity of these underpayments had not been verified either.
ReplyDeleteSo when the government shut down and we were limited on the type of work we could perform, underpayments were on the list. I went to management and asked if I could work on these cases now. They approved it. Went through the list and discovered that the majority of these "underpayments" were false and based on incorrect inputs by employees who didn't go back and fix their errors. When I was done with the list, most of the underpayments had been eliminated as being invalid and removed from the SSI record. A few had been pending for a decade or more. I have no doubt that that underpayment list is again a high number that gets no attention.
Funny you mention that. I’m in the process of doing that exact workload for my office now. So many of the underpayments I have looked at so far are just okay wrong and created by CR’s that made mistakes.
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