What To Do About The Death Master File?

     The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) has produced a lengthy Report to Congress on Sources and Access to State Death Data. This is a role that Social Security, by default, has assumed for the federal government and, indeed, for many businesses. It's a role that Social Security has never been comfortable with and which others have criticized. 

    NAPA has come up with five possible ways to address this issue: 

• the status quo (what SSA does currently)
• designating an agency as the distributor of state death data
• a non-governmental data clearinghouse
• designating an agency as the federal repository of death data
• federal agencies contracting directly with individual states 

    NAPA regards the last two options as not feasible. 

    I'm  betting we end up with no change in the status quo. Social Security acknowledges that there are problems with its Death Master File but it's unlikely that anyone else would do better. There's certainly no other agency that wants this chore.

    By the way, this is a much better report than you usually see from a Beltway Bandit.

Is It OK To Cut Someone Off Benefits Because They Are "Likely" To Be Dead?

    From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General:

SSA suspends benefit payments for a variety of reasons. Suspending benefits stops ongoing monthly payments, and SSA technicians receive alerts to resolve the reason for the suspension. However, SSA does not initiate actions to recover payments made after a beneficiary’s death until technicians add death information and terminate the payment record.

 We identified three populations of beneficiaries who were in suspended payment status as of December 2019. We used death data from 24 States to identify approximately 5,000 beneficiaries in suspended payment status who were deceased according to State death records. We then identified about 6,000 beneficiaries suspended for development of unverified death reports. Finally, we used data analytics to identify approximately 23,000 beneficiaries suspended for address development who we determined were likely deceased. We randomly selected and reviewed 100 beneficiaries from each of the three populations (300 total).

Findings

We determined 263 (88 percent) of the 300 sampled beneficiaries in suspended payment status had died before December 2019. These deceased beneficiaries remained in suspended payment status because SSA (1) technicians did not follow existing policy for beneficiaries suspended for death development, (2) did not have adequate controls to identify beneficiaries suspended for address development who were likely deceased, and (3) policy does not consistently instruct technicians to search for or recognize all available sources of death information. Additionally, SSA policy does not provide sufficient information to guide technicians when they post a beneficiary’s unverified death based on a returned payment from Treasury, which results in erroneous dates of death on SSA records.

Because of these control weaknesses, we estimate SSA issued approximately $298 million in payments to about 24,000 deceased beneficiaries in suspended payment status. SSA did not initiate actions to recover these payments, but it did receive approximately $84 million in recovered funds. SSA erroneously recorded about $33 million of the returned funds as underpayments. We estimate SSA has neither recovered approximately $214 million of the payments nor recorded approximately 24,000 beneficiaries’ death information in the Numident. ...

      Note that there is literally zero concern expressed over the fact that Social Security suspended payments to people who were still alive based upon unverified death reports. In fact, OIG is eager to have Social Security cut off benefits to many more people whom they regard as "likely" dead even though some of them are certainly alive. Would "likely" be a high enough standard for you if one of your loved ones got cut off benefits because some bureaucrat thought they were "likely" dead even though they were very much alive?  Remember that when Social Security decides you’re dead, you don’t just lose your cash benefits, you lose your Medicare and all your bank accounts and credit cards are frozen.

I See Dead People

      From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

... To identify and prevent payments after death, SSA established a program under which States can voluntarily contract with SSA to provide it death data to match against its records. Through Electronic Death Registration (EDR), States electronically submit death reports to SSA. If the decedent’s data match SSA records, SSA posts the State death information to its Numident file and terminates payments to deceased beneficiaries. In addition to EDR, SSA receives death information from other sources, such as family members and funeral directors.

We obtained data files that provided the personally identifiable information of approximately 7 million individuals Alabama, Georgia, or Illinois recorded as deceased between January 1978 and December 2018. We matched the data against SSA payment records and the Numident.

We estimate SSA issued approximately $79 million in payments after death to 1,127 beneficiaries and 4 representative payees who died in Alabama, Georgia, or Illinois between January 1978 and December 2018. Identifying and correcting these discrepancies will prevent approximately $14 million in additional improper payments after death over a 12-month period.

We also identified 53,486 non-beneficiaries who were deceased according to Alabama, Georgia, or Illinois records but whose death information was not in SSA’s Numident. Resolving these discrepancies will improve the accuracy and completeness of death information the Agency shares with other Federal benefit-paying agencies.

    I don't understand. Social Security is marking these people as dead when it receives notice from the states that they're dead but when OIG matches state death records with Social Security records, they find a number of people who are dead but who are not marked as dead in Social Security records. Social Security seems to be relying upon the same records as OIG but OIG finds more dead people. Is the problem at Social Security or is the problem with the data the states are providing Social Security? The report doesn't deal with this question although the answer seems to be crucial for preventing the problem from continuing.

     I'm sure that Social Security officials have asked themselves for years, "How did we get roped into the death master file business?" It's nothing but endless headaches. There's no obvious reason why Social Security should be doing this instead of some other agency. Many, many other agencies and private businesses rely on the death master file.

Six Million?

      From Cox Media Group:

The Social Security Administration plays a critical role in helping people with financial relief in their later years of life, but for some people, the checks don’t ever stop.

“What we found is their books are a mess,” said Adam Andrzejewski with OpenTheBooks.com.

He shared data with us that showed 6 million Social Security numbers that were active for people aged 112-years-old and older.

 “Here’s the problem: there’s only 40 of those people alive in the entire world,” Andrzejewski said. “Last year, Social Security paid out $8 billion improperly.” ...

A bill has been introduced in the Senate to stop dead people from receiving these payments, but Andrzejewski said it has gone nowhere.

     I have no idea whether the 6 million number is accurate but 6 million who are not listed as dead is not the same thing as 6 million dead people receiving benefits. This is so wildly misleading that it raises questions about the motivations of the people behind this "revelation".

     In the end, if you want better efforts to police the death master file, you want to give the Social Security Administration a lot more money for its operating budget. You could, in the alternative, ask whether maintaining the list of dead people should even be the responsibility of the Social Security Administration.

Happens All The Time

      From CBS News:

Mary Hutson of Santo, about an hour west of Fort Worth, began teaching elementary school students in 1963.

Now, the great-grandmother sits and reads with her great-grandchildren and teaching them.

Hutson is very involved with her family.

She is very active.

And, she is very much alive as she explained staring into a zoom call, hair fixed perfectly, smiling from ear to ear with pink lipstick glowing. ...

But a couple of months ago, she was dead according to the government. ...

In June, Hutson’s brother passed away.

When she reported his death to the Social Security Administration, she says she somehow also ended up “deceased” according to records. ...

Particularly during a pandemic, both Hutson and Tuckett [another person who had also been wrongly declared dead] say “coming back to life” is not easy. They both had to visit the social security office in person. They then had to wait for every entity tied to that that magical nine-digit number to bring them back to life. ...

“I was glad they recognized that I am still on earth,” laughed Mrs. Hutson looking down at a letter from the Social Security Administration which she finally received stating that she is alive. “I’m old, but I’m still here.”

More On Stimulus Payments To SSI Recipients

     Last night Social Security sent out a press release saying SSI recipients have to May 5 to file “tax returns” in order for their minor children to get economic stimulus payments.

     Let me be clear. The U.S. Treasury is responsible for making these payments. They’re the ones making a mess of this. If there is another round of payments maybe Treasury will have its act together but my thought is that the Social Security Administration may need to detail some employees to help them out. Social Security has been using databases since the 1930s. Yes, they existed back then in a primitive form. There’s probably no other government agency with Social Security’s experience with databases. Treasury was so pathetic that they didn’t even do a match with the Death Master File before sending out payments! They need help.

"I'm Starting To Stink Really Bad. No Embalming Fluid"

     From the Daily Sentinel in Grand Junction, CO:

Nine little numbers can kill you. Seriously. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust deadly.

That was what Ken Nesslage discovered to his untimely demise. RIP.

He was 77 and only trying to do the right thing when it happened, for heaven's sake.

He had gone to the Social Security Administration office out by the Grand Junction Regional Airport to notify them that his mother had died.

Roberta J. McDonough was 95 years, 1 month and 1 day old when she died on May 13 with her beloved small dog in her lap. Unfortunately, on July 1 it became apparent that the mortuary in Utah hadn't made the notifications for her that it was supposed to and it fell to Nesslage, the trustee for her estate.

A dutiful son to the end, he had all the proper paperwork. However, he was required to enter his own Social Security number into the system to get a ticket to be seen at the office window.

And with that nine-digit entry, Nesslage sent himself into the digital jaws of death.

Not realizing how bad off he was, though, he didn't go to the doctor for a week. He was told his Medicare was suspended.

As soon as he got home, he called Medicare.

"Are you sitting down, Mr. Nesslage?" the woman asked. "I'm going to tell you something that might disturb you greatly."

Then she told him he was dead. ...

He was back at the Social Security office in a hot second, much too upset to be a ghostly apparition.

But, alas, he was dead. As of May 13, in fact. The same day his mother died.

He was assured the error mixing up his mother's death with his own would be corrected.

However, in the days to come Nesslage began to realize it was much easier to die than to come back to life and found himself an odd member among the walking dead all headed downhill. ...

Still, he attempted to refill his blood pressure medication. His Medicare remained suspended.

Credit card — denied. ...

Meanwhile, Judy received another letter, this time from Social Security, telling her what her new monthly payments would be and that she would receive $255 for her husband's burial expenses.  ...

"I'm starting to stink really bad. No embalming fluid," Nesslage deadpanned. ...

On his fourth trip to the office on July 26 — everyone there now knows him by sight and certainly by name — he got a letter indicating he had been reported dead in error. ...

SSAB Recommends That SSA Get Out Of The Death Master File Business

     The Social Security Advisory Board (SSAB) has issued a report recommending that the Social Security Administration ought to get out of the business of maintaining the Death Master File that is used to prevent improper payments of not just Social Security benefits but many other types of government benefits. It is also widely used by private financial institutions. The SSAB thinks the Department of the Treasury should get the job. There’s just one problem with this idea. I’m pretty sure that Treasury wants nothing to do with maintaining the Death Master File and would strongly resist any legislation foisting the job on them.

Finding Humor In The Death Master File

     Former Social Security Commissioner Michael Astrue gave an interview to This American Life on, of all things, Social Security's Death Master File. The interviewer found the concept of a Death Master File droll.

Problems For Another Widow

     I had posted recently about the problems a widow faced after she reported her husband’s death to Social Security and a Social Security employee recorded it as if the husband had died a year earlier than he did. Now comes a second report of another widow who dutifully reported her husband’s death and another Social Security employee recorded it as if both husband and wife had died instead of the husband!

     These reports could be signs of a systems problem.

Where Are You Going To Find The Personnel To Do All Those Face To Face Interviews?

     From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

... Based on a recommendation in our August 2012 review ... SSA [Social Security Administration] implemented MNUP [Medicare Non-Utilization Project] in September 2013. SSA and the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) exchange data, and CMS identifies Old-Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance beneficiaries who are Medicare enrollees age 90 or older, are in current payment status, have a domestic address, and have not used Medicare Part s A or B for 3 years or longer. [The idea being that they may be dead.] ... 

We reviewed a sample of 46 beneficiaries SSA interviewed via telephone during its 2013 MNUP.  ...

During its 2013 MNUP, SSA incorrectly concluded via a telephone interview that 5 (11 percent) of our 46 sample beneficiaries were alive when, in fact, these beneficiaries were deceased at the time of its interviews. On average, the beneficiaries had died 12 years before SSA’s 2013 MNUP, but Agency personnel concluded they were alive. As such, we estimate d SSA overpaid 73 deceased beneficiaries about $16.5 million, which included over $5 million SSA paid after it incorrectly concluded these beneficiaries were alive. We also estimated that SSA would pay over $1 million in additional over payments to deceased MNUP beneficiaries over the next 12 months if it does not suspend or terminate their benefits. ...

SSA can strengthen its policy for interviewing MNUP beneficiaries. For example, we believe SSA should conduct face-to-face interviews of all MNUP beneficiaries to establish a baseline of individuals who are alive. By conducting face-to-face interviews, SSA could enhance its ability to ensure MNUP beneficiaries are alive and reduce its risk of individuals who falsely claim to be the legitimate beneficiary via telephone. ...

SSA did not agree to require face-to-face interviews for all MNUP beneficiaries. ...

     This is one of those OIG reports that assumes that the Social Security Administration has either unlimited staff or zero responsibilities other than reducing overpayments. Of course, you can't overpay someone if you never get around to putting them on benefits to begin with.

An Undying Husband

     From Ann Brenoff writing for Huffpost:

For the past 12 months, your tax dollars have been going to pay Social Security benefits to a dead man. I know this because that dead man is my late husband.

No, I am not engaging in any sort of attempt to defraud the Social Security fund. Quite the contrary, I reported his death to the Social Security Administration immediately after it occurred and have been reporting it repeatedly ever since.

None of my two dozen or so calls ― or the day I took off work to visit my local Social Security office and paid $13 to park ― has changed the fact that, as of this writing, the SSA continues to deposit a monthly payment into the checking account I shared with my dead husband. In fact, they also continue to pay his Medicare premium out of his benefit payment. ...

I reached out to my congressman, who was miraculously able to move a few mountains. We are still ironing out the errors that have compounded over the months and working on mitigating the longer-term impacts: For instance, why should I have to wait months for a corrected 1099 form on benefits that were paid in error and that the agency now wants back? ...

     By the way, has anyone ever received a corrected SSA-1099? Is that even theoretically possible? Also, by the way, in her piece Brenhoff eventually veered off into somehow blaming the agency's POMS manual for her problem, which, I guess, helps demonstrate a point that she was trying to make -- that few people understand how Social Security works.

Actually, This Shows SSA Is Doing Good Work

     From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

Each month, the VA [Department of Veterans Affairs] furnishes SSA [Social Security Administration] with automated death records. Before SSA terminates benefit payments or records death information on the Numident [a major SSA database], SSA employees must independently verify the VA death information. In April 2016, we obtained data from VA identifying approximately 17 million deceased individuals. We matched the VA data against SSA’s payment records to identify potentially deceased beneficiaries in current payment status. ...

SSA issued payments to 3,925 beneficiaries who had dates of death in VA’s records. Our audit results indicated that at least 11 percent of these beneficiaries were alive, and death information in VA’s records was erroneous. However, our audit results also indicated that at least 19 percent of these beneficiaries were deceased , and death information in VA’s records was accurate....

      You can see Social Security's problem. They're receiving a lot of bad information from VA. Mistakenly declaring someone dead when they're not is a very bad thing. Not only are their Social Security benefits ceased, their bank accounts and credit cards are frozen and they can no longer receive medical care. Social Security has to independently confirm that the person has died. That can take a little time and mistakes will be made. In the end, even though Social Security received 17 million death reports from VA, OIG could only identify 19 cases where individuals had died but benefit payments were continuing. Nineteen out of 17 million is actually a pretty good record. That's an error rate of 0.00011% if my math is correct. Of course, the right wing Washington Times accuses Social Security of incompetence.

Duplicate SSN Problems

     There are cases where the Social Security Administration (SSA) has assigned more than one Social Security Number (SSN) to an individual. This can happen intentionally because the person is fleeing domestic violence or is in a witness protection program. It can also happen by mistake. My impression is that it's extremely rare for individuals to accidentally be issued multiple SSNs these days but decades ago it wasn't so rare. I have memories of seeing cases where one individual had been issued three or four SSNs but I haven't seen that sort of thing in decades. It's only a small percentage of number holders who have multiple numbers. However, because hundreds of millions of SSNs have been issued, there are about 4.9 million people with multiple SSNs.
     When SSA becomes aware of one individual having multiple SSNs, the records are supposed to be cross-referenced in the agency's Numident database to prevent payment mistakes.

     Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has done a study on how the agency is dealing with these multiple SSN cases. Here are some excerpts (footnotes omitted):

... We identified more than 5,000 instances where, contrary to Agency policy, SSA appeared to simultaneously issue monthly OASDI [Old Age, Survivors and Disability Insurance] benefits and/or SSI [Supplemental Security Income] payments to individuals under both of their cross-referred SSNs. SSA systems did not automatically identify and consider payments issued under one SSN when determining eligibility for, or computing the benefit amounts paid, under the cross-referred SSN.

Our review of 534 instances ... indicated that, in most cases, it appeared the numberholders simultaneously receiving payments under multiple cross-referred SSNs were not the same individuals, and SSA had cross-referred the SSNs in error. However, in about 20 percent of the cases, it appeared SSA had issued both payments to the same individual. ...

We also identified over 13,000 instances where SSA continued paying beneficiaries after it recorded death information on their cross-referred SSNs. ...  [M]ost of the individuals receiving the payments were not the same individuals whose death information appeared on the cross-referred SSNs, and SSA had cross-referred the SSNs in error. However, in 6 percent of the cases, it appeared that SSA had assigned both cross-referred SSNs to the same individual. Based on our sample results, we estimate SSA issued about $115.4 million in improper payments to 930 deceased beneficiaries after it input death information on their cross -referred SSNs. If the Agency does not correct these errors, we estimate it will issue $13.7 million in additional improper payments over the next 12 months.

Finally, we identified approximately 2. 7 million additional instances not involving SSA payments where SSA input death information on a numberholder’s Numident record for 1 SSN but did not input the death information on the numberholder’s cross-referred SSN(s). ... [A]pproximately 97 percent of these cross- referred SSNs belonged to the same individuals. Therefore, we estimate SSA had death information for more than 2 million deceased numberholders that it did not input into the Numident. As a result, SSA erroneously excluded more than 2 million deceased numberholders’ SSNs from the DMF. ...

     This is one of those things where you could say that millions of dollars have been wasted. I'd say it's one of those things that shows that administering benefit payments to 67 million people is far more complicated than most people would think. Social Security will do some things to try to address this problem but there will always be problems to find because Social Security is just so big.

A Common Story

     From a television station in Denver:

An Arvada woman died about five years ago, but no one told her. And it came as quite a surprise to her late last year.

A mistake by the Social Security Administration put a death alert on Catherine's records -- and it caused problems in every area of her life. ...

Catherine never leaves her west Arvada home without a letter that is an official record of her resurrection from her supposed death. ...

"I couldn't get anybody to tell me what else I could do. So, a year and four months goes by of real hell," she said.

Until the FOX31 Problem Solvers got involved.

"Man, you guys, one phone call, two days later, I was in the Social Security office being helped. And it was taken care of the same day," ...

     I must see a story like this in the media two or three times a week. I rarely post them because they're so repetitive. I guess I'm posting this one because it took so long to get the problem corrected. What was going on here? Usually, the problem is that the undead person has no idea that they need to contact Social Security and wanders around confused about what to do.

Death Master File Problems

     From a recent report by Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG):

Death information on CDPH [California Depart of Public Health] files was not always recorded on SSA records. At the time of our audit, SSA was issuing benefit payments to 83 individuals whose PII [Personally Identifiable Information] matched that of individuals who died in California from 1970 through 2004. 

• In 34 cases, the beneficiaries were deceased. SSA terminated benefits to 28 beneficiaries and identified approximately $4.6 million in improper payments. SSA suspended payments to five beneficiaries but had not quantified the related improper payments. We estimate improper payments in these five cases totaled approximately $ 1.2 million. The remaining case did not involve improper payments. 
• In 43 cases, the beneficiaries were alive. SSA and the Office of Investigations determined that none of the cases involved improper payments to the beneficiaries. 
• In six cases, SSA was determining the beneficiaries’ status. The Office of Operations referred the cases to its regional offices for development. 

We also identified approximately 188,000 numberholders who were likely deceased but had no death information on the Numident [Social Security records]. At the time of our review, none of these numberholders was receiving SSA payments. We provided SSA with the numberholders’ information, and SSA recorded death information on most of these record. ...

     There's a lot to notice here. Yes, benefits were being improperly being paid to at least 28 people. However, there were more cases where simple data matches indicated that a person was dead when they were actually alive. More aggressive use of data matches to cut off the benefits of dead people will inevitably cut off benefits to more people who aren't dead. That's a nightmare for the people whose benefits are cut off. Notice that sensationalist media may point to 188,000 people that Social Security doesn't know are dead without mentioning that none of them is being paid benefits.

Mass Killing By Social Security

     From The News Advance of Lynchburg, VA (emphasis added):

The Luedkes — husband George and wife Ann — had just returned from vacation in late August when they learned the unthinkable.

Ann Luedke was dead, and had been for 12 years, according to the Social Security Administration. Within days, tens of thousands of dollars would be withdrawn from their joint bank accounts by the U.S. Treasury Department — repayment, the federal government reasoned, for Social Security benefits paid to Ann for the three years in which she had been drawing benefits.

“I don’t remember dying,” Ann said, laughing. “I would have noticed.” ...

On Sept. 6, Ann visited the local Social Security Administration office on Timberlake Road and met with an employee who found that Ann was declared deceased. Ann recalled that her record was partially corrected.

The next day, George and Ann visited the local office together. Later the same day, Ann received a voicemail by an employee in the local office informing her that she was among several thousand people affected by a system input error and the Social Security Administration was working on the problem. ...

[Social Security spokesman Daniel O'Connor] said he could not comment on the Luedke case specifically, citing privacy laws.

When speaking of the assertion that several thousand people were erroneously declared deceased, O’Connor referenced an audit conducted by the Office of the Inspector General in 2015 that raised concerns about the accuracy of death records collected by the Social Security Administration.

 The Social Security Administration reached out to five states — including Virginia — to conduct a pilot by which the agency sought to obtain “historical death data” to “further explore filling potential gaps in our records,” O’Connor said. In August 2016, the Social Security Administration posted approximately 40,000 death records from Virginia and two other states in the pilot. While around half of those records reflected true deaths that matched records of the Social Security Administration, it was discovered that some of the remaining 19,000 matches were in error, O’Connor said. ...

     Are you kidding me? Why has there been no public announcement on this? Why no Emergency Message? Did Social Security think no one would notice? Having one's name wrongly added to the Death Master File causes massive problems.

The Living Dead

     Even the New England Journal of Medicine is reporting on the problems of Social Security's Death Master File.

Hiltzik On 60 Minutes Piece

     Michael Hiltzik didn't think much of the 60 Minutes piece on the problems with Social Security's Death Master File (DMF). Here are a few excerpts from his column:

[60 Minutes] implied that it had turned up this scandal through its own digging, so it didn't mention that errors in the DMF is a hardy journalistic perennial, like reports on how bad the traffic is in your town or sweeps-week TV pieces on gourmet restaurants flunking sanitary inspections. ...

Most news reports on the DMF errors have a few things in common. They all seem to reflect the assumption that keeping an error-free master death list should be easy. And they blame the Social Security Administration for the flaws. ...

The biggest hole in the "60 Minutes" segment was the lack of suggestions about what to do about what is plainly an enormous headache for people wrongly listed as deceased. But it's not rocket science. To begin with, although the DMF is public, Congress should outlaw its use by any financial institution to take action against an account holder without verifying the information independently. ...

The news program also might have asked what it would cost the Social Security Administration to make the Death Master File rock-solid and error-free, and whether Congress would be willing to appropriate the money. Expecting the agency to maintain a perfect list, when the roll was never designed to become the raw material for bank and credit decisions, is ridiculous--especially in an era when Congressional cuts to the agency's administrative budget has forced it to close field offices that service tens of millions of benefit enrollees. ...

Should Social Security continue to do its most important job of serving its beneficiaries, or should it respond to blather from Congress and inflated headlines from "60 Minutes"?

60 Minutes Report On Death Master File Problems

Blame CBS for the formatting problems here. Here's a link to watch it properly formatted.