From Follow-up on Dually Entitled Beneficiaries and Family Maximum Provisions, a report by Social Security’s Inspector General:
… This is a follow up to our 2014 audit of the Adjustment of Monthly Benefits Under the Family Maximum Provisions. For our current audit, we identified 23,603 Social Security records with dually entitled beneficiaries and at least 2 other beneficiaries who had a date of entitlement of May 2013 or later and were in current pay status as of May 2023. We selected a random sample of 225 records for review. …
We estimate SSA correctly adjusted benefits in accordance with the family maximum provisions for 15,211 of the 23,603 wage earners’ records in our population (64 percent); however, SSA improperly paid approximately $114 million to spouses and children on 8,392 wage earners’ records (36 percent). …
When you cannot change the facts, or are powerless to alter outcomes, you change the method of accounting. Bisignano will say that the study is inaccurate. Thet when he came to SSA, staff gave him different numbers for everything under the sun. No single source of truth existed. That he is correcting this, in using the ledger as the official source of truth. His ledger will ultimately report that this problem, and many other challenges, are overblown, and not reflected in the 'books'. It will be an apples to oranges comparison, yet enough to satisfy political allies.
ReplyDeleteCan anybody with experience computing family maximums please explain why this is impossible to automate? Ideally with a hypothetical example rather than a hand-wavy “it’s too complicated.” I have no experience with family maximums, but it just seems like if there is a process (however complicated) that leads to one and only one correct answer, then the computation can and should be automated.
ReplyDeleteI don't think it's too complicated. But developing it would require the few people who really understand the policies to take time away from doing casework to work with software developers. It would require money to develop, test, and maintain the system. The small percentage of cases that are the most complicated would cost a lot of developing and testing time. So like many things at SSA, you can do a cheaper solution that gets you most of the way there and have exceptions that need to be done manually (or put everything through the good enough system and have errors) or you can spend enough to do it all. And since there are many SSA workloads that affect more people or have more errors than family maximums, and limited IT funding, doing it all never gets to the top of the priority list. Maybe eventually the good-enough solution will get to the top of the priority list, but will there be people who are smart and well-trained enough to handle the cases that get kicked out, or will SSA force all the cases through and accept some errors? The answer to that probably depends on how many people will be underpaid versus overpaid.
DeleteFamily maximums, on one record, as part of an initial claim, can be processed in almost all cases by the claims software. Add another claimant (such as an additional child born into the household), and a calculator exists, but the actual amounts the calculator produce must be keyed as part of a manual input (the software, as coded, cannot handle it) which is error-prone.
DeleteCOMBINED family maximums for dually entitled beneficiaries, which the report also covers, add another layer of complexity. Once again, calculators exist, and the software cannot handle it without an error-prone manual input. They is a greater opportunity for misadventure since multiple records are impacted - sometimes more than two, if the dual entitlements involved do not precisely overlap on two records.
The broader problem is that "Processing Limitations" and "Exceptions" are rife within the software, and require manual inputs, even in some cases where the math is simple. Applying a significant amount of our IT budget to eliminating the most common would be an efficiency multiplier, as it would remove workload from both FOs and PCs, not to mention eliminate errors that are inevitable with manual inputs. But that has made too much sense for a whole generation of incompetent management.
For examples, see: https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v75n3/v75n3p1.html
DeleteDual-entitlement and combined family maximum cases require simultaneous adjustments to more than one earning records. Then one must consider changes such as beneficiary entitlements and terminations, work deductions, divorces, etc. All these changes require adjustments to all auxiliaries possibly on more than earnings record.
DeleteYou have to manually compute the maximum, none of it is automated. There is a “maximum” maximum family payable. All of the calculations are done manually (ICF)
Deletehttps://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/familymax.html
Deletehttps://www.ssa.gov/oact/cola/dibfamilymax.html
It’s 100% possible to automate everything…calls, claims, FO visits, PC actions etc. I’d imagine it would be too expensive and time consuming to accomplish though.
DeleteI honestly don't even know why we have PC's that manually handle these...
ReplyDelete