From Challenges in Recovering Supplemental Security Income Overpayments, a report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):
... SSA made errors on overpayments for 189 (47 percent) of the 400 sampled SSI recipients because it did not follow policies or use all available tools, to prevent, detect, or recover SSI overpayments. For example, overpayments could have been prevented or detected earlier, but employees made errors when they redetermined SSI eligibility. A redetermination is a review of a recipient or couple’s non-medical eligibility factors (that is, income, resources, and living arrangements) to determine whether the recipient or couple is still eligible for, and receiving, the correct SSI payment amount.
Errors also occurred because employees did not always (1) send recipients complete and accurate due-process notices before they initiated recovery of overpayments; (2) follow policy when they processed waivers of overpayments; or (3) follow policy and use available tools to recover overpayments. When SSA identifies an overpayment, it sends the overpaid person written notification of the overpayment’s cause and amount. Overpayment recovery can begin 60 days after SSA notifies the recipient of the overpayment if they have not requested a waiver of the overpayment collection or a reconsideration of the overpayment facts. If the individual is receiving SSI payments, SSA should begin recovery by withholding from ongoing payments. If the individual is no longer receiving SSI payments, SSA should attempt collection through various means including withholding from ongoing payments to a liable representative payee or spouse, cross-program recovery, referral for external collection through the Department of the Treasury or pursuing recovery from estates.
We estimate SSA did not follow its policies or use all available tools to prevent, detect, or recover SSI overpayments for 1.9 million recipients. For 1.7 million of these recipients, we estimated error amounts totaling over $7 billion. ...
Not only does Social Security lack the manpower to do what OIG recommends, OIG fails to recognize that most of these SSI overpayments are small so going after all of them using every possible mechanism would not be cost-effective.
OIG knows full well SSA and staff cannot follow every jot and title but actually cares not. All they care about is pointing out how smart they are for figuring out where SSA "fails".
ReplyDeleteRedetermination errors are happening because it is quantity over quality. You’d never meet the numbers otherwise. Corners are cut and people disadvantaged because we are chasing clearances at all costs. It is sad, hurtful, and demoralizing.
ReplyDeleteOur motto is "We never have time to do it right the first time, but we always have time to do it over -- eventually".
ReplyDeleteFix that and you will vastly improve the Agency.
I'd like to know where the money goes that is allocated to SSA for specifically non-med redeterminations. Look up your offices rz goal. Take that as a percentage of the whole. The funding for rzs is at a rate of about $450 per rz completion. This equates to about a million a yr in an office that needs say 2500 or 1%. Half a million for 1250 rzs. If allocated to the FO's this would pay for the entire SSI team to do nothing but rzs for the entire yr. The office would be able to clear them correctly as they'd have more time.... using money that is mandated for this exact task. The budget is like 1.5 billion for rzs and SSI cdrs. Instead, SSA leaches the funds to build up I don't know. Tsc's... The tells the field hey we just need you to make the goal no matter the cost to the office or public.
ReplyDelete