The Social Security Subcommittee of the House Ways and Means Committee will hold a hearing at 2:00 this afternoon on Protecting Beneficiaries from the Harm of Improper Payments. Here's the witness list:
- Dr. Kilolo Kijakazi, Ph.D.
Acting Commissioner, Social Security Administration (SSA) -
Ms. Tonya Eickman
Program Audit Division Director, Social Security Administration Office of the Inspector General (OIG) -
Ms. Elizabeth Curda
Director, Education, Workforce, and Income Security, U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO)
If your focus is on protecting beneficiaries, wouldn't you want to hear from an affected beneficiary? Instead they're calling in witnesses from Social Security's Office of Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office, agencies which have inaccurately conflated overpayments with fraud and which have favored unremitting efforts to recover overpayments. No, it looks like the focus will be on beating up on Kijakazi. I'm not sure that in general there's that much to beat up Kijakzi on anyway but blaming her for the overpayment issues is wrong. This mess has been brewing for decades.
3 comments:
I didn't want to watch the entire 7.5 hours, so I read the witness statements.
Kijakazi largely does an accurate job of summing up the complexity we face, and the scale of the problem. She does mention the complexity of the SSI program, but she doesn't mention that many overpayments are due to failure of SSI recipients to report changes timely, or not understanding the complex benefit they get.
It also doesn't help that the advice they get is often wrong or conflicting, or that SSA has a lot of institutional inefficiencies that create these overpaymnts. Did you call the 1-800 number to tell SSA that you and your kid (on SSI) moved? Great, you fulfilled your reporting responsibilities!
Problem is, that teleservice CSR doesn't actually change anything. They enter the information into ePath, a program which essentially taps that person's local FO, which is likely undermanned and overworked, and says in a soft voice "uh, excuse me, there might be a change here you need to look at, just, you know, when you get a chance".
Six months later, ePath information just sitting there, she's not getting her mail, Medicaid cuts the kid off for an address mismatch, and there's an overpayment because we should have lowered Junior's check months ago. If Mom is lucky, she'll get a CSR that spots what happened and will cut her a break on the waiver.
This isn't in any way a "lazy government employee" problem. This is a "terribly designed system, implemented terribly" problem.
Oh and Kijakazi did let out one giant fat whopper of a lie:
"We recognize how critical it is for the public to understand the information we share, including the improper payment notices they receive from us. Our Office of
Communications received an A+ for organizational compliance and an A for writing qualityfrom the Center for Plain Language."
Charles, I defy you to have one claimant bring you a T2 overpayment notice and have them show where it explains the cause of the overpayment in plain, understandable language. It's usually not even there.
Just to be clear about the grade A on plain language. I am pretty sure the agency picks what documents to send to have graded.
If it helps, while the recording of the hearing is over 7 hours long, that's just because they started the livestream really early...you can fast forward through it and only the last couple hours are actually the hearing.
Post a Comment