The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) has produced a lengthy Report to Congress on Sources and Access to State Death Data. This is a role that Social Security, by default, has assumed for the federal government and, indeed, for many businesses. It's a role that Social Security has never been comfortable with and which others have criticized.
NAPA has come up with five possible ways to address this issue:
- the status quo (what SSA does currently)
- designating an agency as the distributor of state death data
- a non-governmental data clearinghouse
- designating an agency as the federal repository of death data
- federal agencies contracting directly with individual states
NAPA regards the last two options as not feasible.
I'm betting we end up with no change in the status quo. Social Security acknowledges that there are problems with its Death Master File but it's unlikely that anyone else would do better. There's certainly no other agency that wants this chore.
By the way, this is a much better report than you usually see from a Beltway Bandit.
7 comments:
Historical Momentum. Nothing will change, it will just roll along as always.
Social Security collects these missions along the way.
Medicare sign-ups? Sure, why not. Can't have CMS doing too much customer outreach.
Administer the national welfare system? Well I mean, they already have all those field offices, hate to put them to waste.
Processing the default national ID number? Why gosh, who could have seen that coming?
Tracking births and deaths? Seems program-relevant, doesn't it? Let's let them run it.
No, we don't need any more money to do all this stuff. As a matter of fact, why are we wasting a Cabinet slot on this agency? Let's just take that away.....
Well lets see, yeah you kinda gotta be in charge of issuing the SSN when you are the SSA, so I dont really know who you think should do that, and since it is issued early like birth now you gotta do that, and it ends with the person so yeah why not track death since it is SSAs number and benefit they are shutting down. In fact who else would do it?
15 minutes to due a Medicare A application online and not that much longer to process it for SSA, a few possible hiccups can occur occasionally, but most of them are actually errors by SSA like typo birth date or name switch, since retirement used to occur at 65 before it makes sense for SSA to process this, because.
SSI had its own hires when installed, sorry not like it was just dumped. They even did a big hire of SSI replacements when Part D rolled out, those hires were almost all T16 even though the program was a T2 program.
Nobody forces you to work there, dont like the door you came in through will let you out too.
If you haven’t noticed, no one wants to work at SSA. Numbers are dwindling and new hires quickly realize if they have any other options at all, SSA isn’t the place to work.
No doubt the agency should handle the issuance of SSN cards.
Tracking deaths, not really relevant unless someone receives benefits from the agency. In that case sure, otherwise, since no one has a “retirement account” at SSA, no need to close anything.
Medicare should be long to Medicare…period.
There honestly not enough manpower to handle SSI as it is currently constructed. It needs to to be re-vamped and streamlined but no one will do it. Most of the people that quit SSA deal with SSI. Don’t know many burnouts unrelated to SSI or front end work.
It’s frustrating working for an underfunded agency who is constantly tasked with more and more responsibilities despite being understaffed.
Im not the previous poster however I understand. It’s not the work that frustrates most of us. It’s the the lack of support from Congress and higher ups in the agency in addition to the disrespect from those not contributing.
1:11 Do you want to pay your Medicare B premium and your Part D premium monthly or quarterly, if Medicare is to do Medicare then it cant come out of you benefit check. So you and 63,964,675 (as of 12/21/21) others will have to pay your premiums. Then for those on DIB the SSA would have to contact Medicare or the Claimant would have to contact Medicare to let them know a person has been disabled long enough to be eligible. And ESRD and on and on and on.
Sorry, no sympathy here. Nobody is drafted to work for the government. People make the choice for a reason. When it isnt what they thought it would be and stay, that is on the worker.
MBR and SSID do not interface with Numi, SSA’s “official” death record. Field office employees receive certified copies of death certificates and process survivors claims daily but it doesn’t matter to folks in HQ. Instead of acknowledging our system limitations, they instructed us to overlook the death proven code on queries because Numident is the agency official death record. A watchdog group will need to look into this deception.
You’re right, no one is drafted. But I’m doing the best I can to help people navigate the government red tape. Just because you have a different opinion doesn’t justify being rude or an idiot.
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