From a recent report by Social Security’s Office of Inspector General (OIG):
… [W]e reviewed a sample of 274 cases from a population of 1.5 million recipients SSA placed in non-payment status codes from March 2020 through May 2022 after determining the recipients failed to provide requested information or take requested actions. Additionally, we identified 61,176 recipients who were placed into 7 nonpayment status codes during periods SSA had prohibited their use.
Results
SSA did not act in accordance with its policy and procedures when it processed SSI ineligibility determinations and suspensions based on applicants’, recipients’, or representative payees’ failure to provide information. SSA’s employees did not complete all required steps for 156 (57 percent) of the 274 sampled cases placed in non-payment status, which led to 96 of the 156 recipients not receiving $203,133 in SSI payments they should have received. Projecting these results to our population, we estimate SSA did not follow its policy before it denied or suspended SSI payments for 871,330 recipients. Of these recipients, we estimate 536,203 did not receive $647 million in SSI payments they should have received. …
It’s way too easy for field office employees to deny on the basis of failure to provide information without making any serious effort to contact the claimant.
12 comments:
This isn't about denials, it's about people getting suspended because the only way to get their attention and make them do the bare minimum that's required to get free taxpayer money every month is to stop their check. That processs is absurdly difficult which is why OIG found that it got messed up a lot.
Now if you want to talk about denials on initial claims, that's a separate issue. The real takeaway here is that SSA employees don't have time to handhold and coddle applications, or their representatives. Got to keep the numbers down, got to make the numbers look good, and when you're taking 8 claims a day the claimant who turns in junk and doesn't read their mail or answer their phone is going to have a hard go of it.
SSA isn't going to hunt you down to make you fill out a form you should have filled out already. There's only so many times you can screw up an 827 before they're just going to give up and move on to somebody they can actually help.
This is spot on. Regarding post entitlement suspensions-> In one breath, we have people breathing down our throats requiring us to be “good stewards of taxpayer money” and the next breath, we are required to complete a process to suspend that gets more and more complicated every few months. It is almost the norm for SSI recipients to be non compliant- not the exception. It should be as simple as- two notices sent and no response? Suspended. If people want the benefit then they need make the effort to keep numbers and adresses updated. Instead of nitpicking to death, every single action technicians take, let’s make meaningful change. Develop a system where address and phone number changes online push through to SSI records, advocate for policies to change so that the PMV and VTR are not charged at all (instead of the recent and impossible SSI food stamp changes that were recently made) and give SSA employees electronic access to the information needed to update records- state child support amounts, better unemployment information, cash assistance and food stamp data.
OHO spends a HUGE amount of time trying to track down claimants who have moved, or don’t respond to notices even though they haven’t moved. Many of them once had representatives who have long since withdrawn due to lack of contact. Every once in a while you find the claimant, and some fraction of those claims are approved. Hooray! But it takes a lot of time away from deciding other cases. And that is at the hearing level where we don’t have a massive backlog any more. Hard to imagine that at initial and reconsideration levels, where there is a massive backlog, claims reps have the time to dot every “i” and cross every “t” to find a claimant who is not responding.
wow
It should absolutely not be as simple as two notices with no response, suspend. These are people with real expenses and obligations who by definition of their entitlement (unless old age), are unable to substantially. Which would hint to someone with compassion, that some of them might need assistance. And yes I have worked in a field office and agree it was extremely overwhelming.
“It’s why too easy for field office employees to deny on the basis of failure to provide information without making any serious effort to contact the claimant.”
LOL. This is rich. Most people that say this don’t currently work and never have worked in a field office putting up with claimants shenanigans. This isn’t even about denying, but rather suspending. The amount of hoops a claims rep has to go through to suspend someone on SSI is insane. Secondly, I love that there is NEVER any accountability on the part of the claimant. Claims reps always tell people “if you move, make sure you update us with your new address and phone number as soon as possible.” For 90% of claimants, getting them to follow the rules is a damn pipe dream.
And I bet the agency spent about $6 billion preventing those claimants from getting the $6 million or so owed to them. But I guess it was worth it if it kept even one lazy person with brown skin from getting a tiny amount of some rich white family‘s tax dollars they may not have technically been entitled to. Thanks again, GOP!
SSA employees are under production pressure from managers. Sometimes rules must be bent in order to get a case moving, or to encourage a beneficiary to comply..
Some of the instructions in POMS are not realistic when dealing with actual caseloads.
I’ve personally reviewed quite a few suspensions that were pretty egregious in their lack of care or event attempt to follow policy. I have a lot of grace for the claims specialists. The policy is often onerous but I don’t have any patience for claims specialists who claim the policy is to complex or onerous to follow who criticize the recipients for not following our reporting responsibilities and notices which are equally confusing.
How many of those 827s were submitted but sitting in WorkTrack not profiled? Or processed incorrectly? Or the person's disability is what's keeping them from filling it out as well as you'd like? Or the address change didn't propagate through to CCE so the field office sent it to the wrong address? It's hard to be a claims rep. But it's also hard to be a claimant.
Mail everything certified, or at least provide tracking, ALWAYS take copies and be ready to go to the office at a moments notice, regardless of wait time. If you cannot, send a representative in your place. ALWAYS ALWAYS verify SSA got information on your case, and KEEP COPIES and be prepared to defend yourself.
SSA rules seem to operate under the assumption that CS’ have a workload of ONLY one! The reality is much different. We have ever growing case loads. Staff leave and they are not replaced so the work continues to grown without any relief in sight. Add mgmt pressures, the dumb changes being made by Commissioner TikTok that really do not help us much, and the cherry on top of all of this are claimants that cannot be bothered to do the bare minimum required for their monthly benefit.
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