60 Minutes Report On Death Master File Problems

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

Well, You Looked Dead To Me

     Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued a report on Social Security's efforts to deal with situations in which the agency receives some information suggesting the possibility that a beneficiary has died but not definitive proof of death. Two of the situations identified by OIG were mail returned as undeliverable or a beneficiary who cannot be located. Not surprisingly, there are often overpayments in these cases when it turned out that the beneficiary had died. The agency often failed to recoup the money in these cases. OIG identified 58 cases involving about $1 million where that happened.

     This is one of those reports where you wonder whether OIG considers the collateral costs of what it is recommending. Sometimes people move and fail to leave a forwarding address. Sometimes the Post Office fails to properly implement a forwarding address. Sometimes a John Smith is reported to have died but the agency needs the death certificate to make sure it doesn't cut off benefits to the wrong John Smith. Sometimes people just disappear. Sometimes they reappear.  An overly aggressive approach to these types of cases could  save money but it could also cause benefit terminations for a lot of people who aren't dead. That's an enormous hassle for those whose benefits are wrongly terminated. Social Security doesn't have an army of employees with time on their hands to quickly investigate and sort out these cases.

Makes For Nice Headlines

     It doesn't even show up on the Committee's website but apparently the House Social Security Subcommittee plans to hold a hearing on Monday on the reports that there are millions of names shown in Social Security's database as being alive at age 112 or older, even though only 13 of them are receiving benefits and there's a date of birth error in each of those cases. 

     There's legitimate concern that the database inadequacy could be exploited for non-Social Security related criminal purposes but no sign that's actually happened. Declaring all those people dead would create havoc for many thousands of people whose date of birth was inaccurately entered in a database. This issue makes for great headlines but this shouldn't be a major story.

This Matters Far More Than Some Stupid WSJ Op Ed

     Is it easier to win a World Series than to get on Social Security disability?

Number Drawing Disability Benefits Declines For Fifth Straight Month

     The number of people drawing Social Security disability benefits declined in February. This is the fifth straight month of decline. I think we have a trend.

Does Social Security Have A Policy On This?

     The Social Security Administration allows electronic signatures on its Form SSA-827, "Authorization To Disclose Information To The Social Security Administration." The agency allows most claims and appeals to be filed online. What about Form SSA-1696, "Appointment of Representative." What about fee agreements between attorneys and their clients? Does Social Security have a policy on acceptance of electronic signatures on these forms? Are "wet" signatures still required?

Age 112 And Still Not Dead On Social Security's Books

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

SSA did not have controls in place to annotate death information on the Numident records of numberholders who exceeded maximum reasonable life expectancies and were likely deceased. To illustrate, we identified approximately 6.5 million numberholders age 112 or older who did not have death information on the Numident. 

     This report is drawing attention from Congress and the media.
     The important thing to note is that Social Security isn't paying benefits to these deceased numberholders. There are a few people who are supposedly 112 or older who are receiving benefits but these are mostly due to errors in inputting date of birth, that is the people are actually younger than 112. For instance, somebody input 2/2/01 when they meant to input 2/2/91. There are a few other people receiving benefits on an incorrect account due to transposition errors in inputting their Social Security number when they applied for benefits. These folks are as likely to be underpaid as overpaid. These cases are only a very minor problem.
     OIG's point is that the Social Security numbers of people who are dead are sometimes used for identity fraud that doesn't involve Social Security benefits. This leads back to Social Security's longstanding complaint that it's set up to issue benefits to those who are entitled to benefits, not to administer a de facto national identification system. 

     It may be tempting to say that Social Security ought to declare dead everyone identified in their database as 112 or older but Social Security already knows that it has an incorrect date of birth for many people. It just doesn't know which people. Declaring someone dead when they are alive creates major problems. That already happens way too often. Declaring everyone dead who is down in Social Security's records as being 112 or older will lead to howls of outrage from thousands of people who would wrongly be declared dead and whose lives would be badly disrupted. It's not just Social Security. Other government agencies and financial institutions rely upon Social Security's Death Master File.
     OIG has a legitimate interest in preventing fraud, whether it's fraud on the Social Security Administration or identity fraud involving a Social Security number. However, OIG seems unconcerned with the problem of collateral damage to innocent people from overaggressive efforts to prevent fraud.

Hit Piece In The WSJ

     The Wall Street Journal has an op ed piece titled "Disability Claim Denied? Find The Right Judge." It's behind a pay wall. I'll just extract a few phrases and sentences to give readers the flavor of the piece:

• "morphed into a benefit bonanza that costs taxpayers billions of dollars more than it should"
• "judicial impartiality has declined significantly"
• "Congress should also institute 15-year term limits for judges"
• "Congress can limit this gamesmanship by allowing only one application per claimant in a three-year period."
• "Decades ago workers ages 50 or 55 might have been considered retiring, but this is no longer generally the case. Novel job-training programs also make it easier than ever for workers to move into new fields and make up for low levels of education, and new disability criteria would account for these changes."  
  

     Michael Hiltzik takes down some of the nonsense in this piece but there's so much more. I'll limit myself to one sentence in the piece. What are these "novel job-training programs" that make it easier for handicapped people to move into different fields? I have no idea what he's talking about. Older people are less adaptable. That's just a fact of human existence. There's no program, old or new, that can change that. Making up for low levels of education? Adult basic education has been around for a very long time for those who are able to take advantage of it. The problem, however, is that the most common reason for people having low educational attainments is that they have limited cognitive abilities. That's an unpleasant truth that both liberals and conservatives prefer not to talk about. Sure, the limited cognitive abilities often have their genesis in childhood poverty but limited cognitive abilities are largely irreparable regardless of their cause. I'd be happy to substitute IQ tests for educational attainments in disability determination.