Social Security’s Office of Inspector General has issued a report on an investigation into the cost effectiveness of the agency’s efforts to collect small overpayments. Here’s an excerpt.
… Of the 250 low-dollar OASDI [Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance] overpayments we reviewed, SSA took actions on 50 (20 percent) that we did not consider cost-beneficial because it sent more notices to the overpaid individuals than required. Since SSA could not provide its average cost to send an overpayment notice, we applied the average cost to collect overpayments as reported in CAS during our audit period, and we did not consider it to have been cost-beneficial to recover these 50 overpayments. Specifically, we estimate SSA spent $14,492 to attempt to recover the 50 overpayments, which totaled $8,129.
Projected to our population, we estimated SSA spent $4.6 million to recover almost 16,000 low-dollar OASDI overpayments totaling almost $2.6 million. Therefore, we estimate SSA spent about $2 million more than it would recover. …
6 comments:
This was a very good attempt by SSA to bring money in to fund the “ballroom” 💃
Forget about it. SSA needs to stop all the sloppy overpayments. It hands out money to people who have no chance of paying it back.
This is why Administrative Waivers exist.
We need ai to guide employees so fewer mistakes are made.It also should improve productivity.
Why go through the process of sending a notice for tiny overpayments for SSI recipients (for example, those who are enrolled in PIE and their earnings just weren't processed quickly enough), then processing a waiver request? Those things cost money. And SSA doesn't always follow its administrative waiver rules. I've helped people request waiver on sub-$2000 OPs that get inexplicably denied (and no the person wasn't at fault) and then we request reconsideration and have conferences and a whole bunch of time is wasted. If SSA actually followed its administrative waiver rules, things would be better. Congress raising the income disregards would help a ton too.
a couple options to achieve your goal: greatly increase staff at SSA so they can promptly handle all change reports (prisoner, left country, came back to country, hospital, nursing home, wages, other income, deaths, bank accounts, retirement funds, life insurance policies with cash surrender value, special needs trusts and ABLE accounts, living arrangements, real estate, vehicle ownership, marriage, divorce, child support, etc.). Ensure that they are properly trained on the intricacies of SSI so they can avoid underpayments as wells as overpayments!
OR make the rules simpler so that a person who goes from a shelter to his grandma's couch, or who gets a $2001 state tax refund on 2/28 and doesn't immediately spend it, or who earns $450 one month and $460 the next month and $392 the month after that, doesn't need their benefits changed.
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