The Trump Administration is asserting that there are literally tens of millions of people receiving Social Security benefits even though they’re way over 100 years old -- 150 years old in many cases! This is a disturbing allegation.
I think that Social Security has to treat this seriously. The thing to do is to look at what private enterprise does to prevent fraud committed by crooks using the identity of deceased individuals.
Private enterprise, particularly financial institutions such as banks and insurance companies, use a database of deceased Americans to prevent fraud. It’s called the Death Master File. It’s state of the art and all financial institutions rely on the Death Master File.
Social Security ought to use the Death Master File to prevent fraud.
I’m sure that most of my readers know I’m being facetious. That state of the art Death Master File used widely by financial institutions was created and is maintained by the Social Security Administration which certainly uses it to cut off benefits to those who have died. Social Security isn’t beset by fraud committed using the identities of the deceased. It’s the exact opposite. It’s literally the very model of how to prevent it!
I wonder if Fiserv, Frank Bisignano’s old company, uses the Death Master File.
13 comments:
Fraud is exceptionally rare, but I'm curious if there already is just a "stop payment" feature if an individual linked to a particular SSN hits, say, 115 years old. I suspect there is, but I'm not an insider. And while I am aware there are sections of POMS relating to payments, that particular chapter is not public (it's sometimes referenced in random other chapters, which is why I am aware of it.)
If not, that's a pretty simple thing to give that DOGE/Trump could brag about.
Exactly! This is why we need to privatize Social Security so the wolves on Wall Street can make billions gambling away Americans retirement and disability insurance funds! What could go wrong?
Thanks for the DMF chuckle, Charles.
To clarify the allegations, did Musk or anyone else actually allege that the extremely aged people are receiving SSA benefits in mass numbers? All I've seen attributed to him is statements that the rolls include millions of people in these age groups with no date of death or indication that they are deceased. That certainly raises the implication of this allegation of fraud but I'm not sure who is connecting the dots and attributing the fraudulent benefits claim to Musk.
In his uniformed response to a reporter's question about Michelle King's departure, he referred to some vague numbers and then definitely implied there was fraud. True - he doesn't state it exactly ("How can you have numbers like this?" "How many of them are being paid? Maybe millions of them." if so, "It's a total fraud."), but it's one of those answers that everyone knows what he is implying - the dots are pretty close together. And then "A lot of illegal immigrants are in Social Security." What the hell?. Sigh. And the new guy - the one that self-professes to have no qualms about bullying his supervisors or doing what he believes is correct - well that patsy has sealed his own fate. What a schmuck.
There is a program in place for last 10 years or so whereby any SSN reaching age 115 with no date of death has record suspended (S9 AGE115). When the program was initiated it applied to all records found with that criteria and continues on a recurring basis periodically to identify any new records reaching that age with no date of death. This is done also in coordination with CMS to establish that no medical claims have been processed in past several years for that SSN. The CMS program also runs separately to identify non-utilization SSNs for payment and Medicare claim suspension/termination. It is possible, though highly unlikely, that a payment could go out to any one of those SSNs using a manual input process. The DMF would not prevent this as there is no date of death posted to those SSNs.
Maybe do some research before posting rhetoric. I am a retired SSA employee and there are systems and special workloads in place to catch this. Just because someone says something that is in a position of power does not make it true.
Well, it is certainly an established fact that there has been and continues to be frequent SSN (and tangentially passport and Medicare/Medicaid) fraud investigated by the agencies responsible (SSA, State Dept., CMS, every state in union). https://www.experian.com/blogs/ask-experian/what-is-social-security-fraud/
I am in the process of retiring and don't want to jeopardize that, but I am tempted to scream from every rooftop that anytime the agency goes out to the states to request all death reports for the last whatever number of years -- which they do when they feel pressured to add death reports for the extremely aged -- the state vital records folks send in millions of reports and about 10K of those are LIVING PEOPLE. People who have already had their lives upended once (or more) by being recorded on the NUMIDENT and placed on the DMF by mistake. These people's lives are upended completely. Be careful what you push for, America. The next erroneous death report may be your own.
People who are interested in reality should read OIG's many reports on the problems with the Numident and DMF. Many of the problems are not restricted to SSA, but are spread to other agencies (and private industry like banking) through inaccurate data.
It is important to understand that neither of these things are payment systems. They are databases that interface with the payment systems and (in most cases) spew out alerts for humans to solve when things go haywire. Earnings after death and dead rep payees are some of the more common. OIG has been finding programs with the interface and the underlying data for at least 20 years.
I think Musk's team should be given exclusive and personal responsibility for creating a 100% accurate DMF. Make them responsible to the Treasury and the private financial industry. This will get them out of hair in 180 days.
2:48, YES!!!!!! DOGE alone can fix DMF!!! Go forth, guys!
And your point, 1:43? Certainly no one said there isn't fraud - there are always initiatives and processes to address the ever-evolving ingenuity of the fraudster community. Employees don't want to see their tax monies stolen either. But even your own link has little if nothing to do with fraud perpetrated by individuals who are 150 or illegal immigrants. In short - Trump lies about the scope of the issues, shows no respect for those that have dedicated their careers to serving the public, and continues to just make stuff up on the fly so that apologists can invent out some whataboutisms to try to divert from his absolute disinterest in the truth.
There is. If a person is 115 or older, has been out of contact for 7 or more years, and there are no auxiliary beneficiaries entitled on the same record under age 115, they are automatically terminated due to age as presumed deceased. SSA manually worked most of the ancient, stinky suspended cases back in the 2012-2014 timeframe (they had to develop a method to force-terminate the records because SSA's normal tools wouldn't work on them) before implementing the 115-7-115 solution. POMS reference on it is GN 02602.578. And, it is available in the public POMS.
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