According to a new study from its watchdog, the Social Security Administration (SSA) is being criticized for not doing enough to stop wrong payments. The SSA’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has criticized the agency for not following through on important suggestions meant to cut down on the billions of dollars in wrong payouts made in recent years. There are two types of wrong payments: underpayments and overpayments. Underpayments happen when beneficiaries get less than they are owed, and overpayments happen when beneficiaries get more than they are due.
SSA is thought to have made about $72 billion in mistakes in payments between fiscal years 2015 and 2022. Most of these were overpayments. The SSA owed a huge $23 billion in overpayments that had not been collected by the end of fiscal year 2023. “SSA must be a responsible steward of the funds entrusted to it by minimizing the risk of making improper payments and recovering overpayments when they occur,” the OIG report says, emphasizing how important it is to act quickly. The report also talks about how SSA didn’t follow many of the OIG’s earlier suggestions which would have helped a lot with the problem.
The report talks about how the SSA didn’t follow through on several important suggestions that would have made its methods for recovering overpayments and giving out underpayments better. When the OIG first asked the SSA to do something in 2018, the agency said it was going to put in place a “comprehensive debt management product.” But this project was shelved in 2024 because it didn’t have enough money. Michelle L. Anderson, Assistant Inspector General for Audit and Acting Inspector General, said, “Improper payments have been a long-standing problem for SSA.” She was very critical of the agency’s failure to address the issue. The Agency has taken some steps to deal with this problem, but it needs to do more. The OIG’s suggestions can help the Agency figure out what steps it needs to take to fix the problem. SSA will continue to have a hard time with improper payments as long as they can’t get better access to data, boost automation, modernize their systems, or make changes to laws or policies.
A new report from the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) showed that as of February 2024, SSA had given more than $1.1 billion in wrongly paid benefits to a group of 528,000 people. This shows how bad the problem is. The study also pointed out inefficiencies in SSA’s processes, pointing out that it took an amazing 698 days on average to fix an incorrect payment.
Social Security will be changed to fix the issue
The SSA has revealed a change in how it recovers overpayments because of growing concerns about how much trouble these overpayments cause for beneficiaries, many of whom get them through no fault of their own. Before, the Agency could get back the full amount of an overpayment by taking away the whole person’s monthly Social Security income. Unfortunately, the SSA has chosen to only recover 10% of a person’s monthly benefit to make things easier for those who receive benefits.
“Social Security is taking a critically important step toward our goal of making sure that our overpayment policies are fair and equitable and do not unduly harm anyone,” said SSA Commissioner Martin O’Malley about the change. He also talked about the terrible things that could happen because of the old policy, saying, “It is unconscionable that someone could lose their home or not be able to pay their bills because Social Security withheld their entire payment to recover an overpayment.”
The SSA says that it is required by law to either change someone’s benefits or collect bills when it finds out that they got payments they weren’t supposed to get. A spokesperson for the SSA told Newsweek, “Social Security is required by law to adjust benefits or collect debts when we determine that someone has received payments to which they are not entitled and an overpayment occurs.” This was a clear statement of the agency’s duty. We have to live up to our duty to the people and take good care of the trust funds.
Even with these efforts and comments, the continuing problems that the OIG has pointed out show that SSA has a lot of work to do to fix the systemic problems that lead to wrong payments.