The Washington Post has a nice article about the fruitless DOGE efforts to find fraud at Social Security. It discusses a special recent effort to contact recipients over 100. It says there were only 1,294 of them. That number sounds far too low to me.
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Yeah, there's no way that statistic is correct. Even SSA's own data show it's a lot higher: according to SSA's most recent Statistical Supplement, Table 5.A10 (https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/statcomps/supplement/2024/5a.html#table5.a10), there were about 74,000 OASDI beneficiaries age 100 or older, as of Dec 2023. That's still only about 1% of all beneficiaries, so it's fairly small in the scope of the program. But the WaPo's number is not accurate, or not accurately described at least. I would bet the internal agency study that it cites was actually a sample of 1 section of the MBR, or something like that.
Social Security is among the most scrutinized and audited agencies in government, with frequent probes by its 500-person Office of Inspector General. It pays outside auditors to examine its books. Congress grills agency officials. Last year, a major focus in congressional hearings led by the GOP wasn’t waste or fraud - it was about Social Security being too aggressive in clawing back accidental benefit overpayments.
Criminal investigators with Social Security’s IG office typically investigate cases tied to disability fraud or covering up a relative’s death to continue receiving benefits. The IG also monitors seemingly minor issues, such as potential misuse of government credit cards. Last month, it reported that the risk for problems was low because of strict internal controls.
“It’s extremely closely watched,” said Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group that seeks to expand coverage.
This “special effort” is actually adding to waste. These reviews already happen every year. Every year, all claimants over 100 receive a review and a phone interview as part of the centenarian project. Many also receive face to face interviews. The agency also reviews the Medicare non usage claimants. Very tired of these patently false allegations that SSA is paying an army of dead people and has no internal controls
It doesn't say the 1294 they contacted was everyone over age 100. It may have been those who were over 100 and didn't have recent Medicare usage, or some other criteria for pulling them out of the wider pool of centenarian beneficiaries.
Note they haven’t pointed out any real fraud yet for any third party SSDI application filed with an attorney they now will require a disabled person to appear in person to prove their identity. There is no mechanism for an individual to confirm identity online to an application filed by a third party. They are preventing people from applying, in effect.
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