A press release from Social Security's Office of Inspector General:
Receiving accurate reports of death is a major and ongoing concern for the Social Security Administration (SSA). A recent report by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) illustrates the need for SSA to continue to improve its death reporting processing systems.
According to the report entitled, “Rejection of State Death Reports,” from November 2018 through October 2022, states throughout the country submitted about 13.7 million death reports to SSA. SSA’s Death Information Processing System (DIPS) accepted about 12.2 million and rejected nearly 1.5 million (11 percent) state death reports. SSA OIG determined that SSA rejected over 1.4 million state death reports that did not pass DIPS verification checks. SSA uses DIPS to verify the death information it receives. DIPS rejects death reports that do not pass its verification checks to prevent posting erroneous death information to SSA records.
It is only after death information passes DIPS verifications that SSA records the information to the Numident (a database that stores information for all Social Security numberholders) and terminates payments to deceased beneficiaries. The verification checks prevented DIPS from posting incorrect or duplicate death information to SSA records for approximately 773,000 of the 1.4 million death reports submitted by states.
However, SSA OIG reported an estimated 702,000 of the 1.4 million state death reports that were rejected contained valid death data but did not pass DIPS verification checks. DIPS rejected most death reports when it detected a verification date submitted by the reporter was different than the latest verification date in SSA’s records. When this occurs, DIPS rejects the report without validating whether the reported death information is correct. This delays posting of the date of death to the Numident and payment records and results in continued payments to deceased beneficiaries until SSA receives and processes the death information.
This issue led to improper payments to beneficiaries of $327 million and could lead to an additional $108 million over the next year if SSA does not add death information to payment records for beneficiaries in current payment status. Moreover, SSA employees must manually process the rejected death records. It is estimated it will require SSA employees to spend 199,000 hours to process this workload, costing $12 million in administrative expenses. OIG made three recommendations to improve the accuracy of the death information in its records to which SSA agreed. See the full report here.
These things are vastly more complicated than DOGE can imagine.
10 comments:
100 percent
About 10 years ago DIPS replaced the old system - DACUS, which was around for 30+ years and was much worse. Also, many states still used paper processing before moving to digital about 15 years or so ago.
An interesting tangent point: every year in Jan-Feb timeframe, incorrect dates of death are input (keyed into screens for overnight update to payment records by FO or PC technicians) causing large hiccups in payments. What causes these errors (besides that they are keying errors)? Incorrect Year of death. Yes, when the year changes, technicians are so used to inputting the previous year that this is done virtually unconsciously.
This spike in erroneous death terminations statistics occurs every year, resulting in large overpayments being posted, erroneously, and frequently survivors benefits processed retroactively and erroneously. Then requiring additional keying to reverse and input the correct date of death, which in some cases cannot be updated overnight due to multiple complications and therefore requiring additional manual corrections to the record(s).
It's all due to human error and I'm not faulting the technicians as it is more than likely due to the overwhelming volume of case-load and pressure to process cases as fast as possible. But think about it in your daily life, how often in Jan-Feb when you need to write a check or post a date do you put the previous year?
I thought the millions of people over 100 were numident records where the people died before Numidents were computerized (1972). There was no reason to figure out if they were dead or not. I don't know when deaths were first entered on Numidents, 1972 or years later.
Doesn't SSA already do #1 and #2 of the recommendations?
RECOMMENDATIONS
We recommend SSA:
Record correct death information on the Numident, terminate payments, and initiate
collection of the overpayments or release the underpayments for the deceased beneficiaries
in our populations.
Add death information to the Numident for the identified deceased non-beneficiaries.
Make improvements to DIPS, such as adding a Numident match to assess OVS
discrepancies and resolving minor SSN discrepancies before rejecting a state death report.
Ahh, says DOGE. Validation and error checking! That's the problem, you are trying to NOT post possibly bad data automatically and that lets the illegals and vampires escape detection! Kill them all and let god sort them out is the DOGE cry!
Musk has cast the idea as one that’s primarily about immigration, falsely claiming that undocumented immigrants are fraudulently accessing hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of entitlements, including Social Security, Medicaid and disability programs, as part of a Democratic scheme for votes.
“By using entitlements fraud, the Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants,” Musk, the billionaire tech CEO behind the Department of Government Efficiency, said Monday on Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast, without evidence. “And buy voters. Basically bring in 10, 20 million people who are beholden to the Democrats for government handouts and will vote overwhelmingly Democrat, as has been demonstrated in California.”
“By using entitlements fraud, the Democrats have been able to attract and retain vast numbers of illegal immigrants,” Musk, the billionaire tech CEO behind the Department of Government Efficiency, said Monday on Sen. Ted Cruz’s podcast, without evidence. “And buy voters. Basically bring in 10, 20 million people who are beholden to the Democrats for government handouts and will vote overwhelmingly Democrat, as has been demonstrated in California.”
Musk told Cruz, R-Texas, that his efforts to end the alleged fraud are why people on the left “hate my guts and want me to die.” He said the fraud has cost the government $100 billion to $200 billion.
It’s an argument Musk has been making repeatedly in recent weeks, as DOGE and the Trump administration announce and push for more cuts to the SSA, including eliminating thousands of employees from the already lean agency, ending the ability to make claims by phone and shuttering dozens of field offices that help seniors access their benefits.
We just got an email that they did a massive DIPS run to terminate 2.5 million numidents. They didn't disclose any of the parameters, but I imagine they were ancient records with no specified date of death.
They say that these records had no MBR (disability/retirement computer record) or SSR (SSI record), but I don't trust these idiots' ability properly filter criteria for a minute.
Erroneous deaths are about to see a huge spike.
Normally not a problem but when it is it is a huge problem. Had some folks we were assisting, after death we could not get them to stop paying, calls, emails, hand carried and delivered 5 death certificates, continued in pay for 17 months. No way is this the norm at all, but weird stuff does happen and when you deal with so many people even a tenth of a percent is a big number to most people. Also get a good state ID for your seniors if you move them to a LTC facility. If they accidentally get declared dead and have no ID it is super hard to get things going again, we had to use certified medical records.
My mother died on the 30th of January. She received, via direct deposit, a check for January in February, but with days, that check was refunded to SS by the bank based upon her death. All proper but does anyone know if this is counted as an overpayment, even though immediately collected. This happens every month and if these are classified as overpayments, that would account for millions of dollars of overpayments that really aren't an issue.
Post a Comment