Growls

In the June issue of Wastewatcher, a monthly dispatch from Citizens Against Government Waste’s (CAGW), Roger Morse wrote:

“Apparently, the Social Security Administration (SSA) believes that a “shovel ready” project means digging up the dead to hand them a stimulus check.”

Here’s the background:

“In fact, the SSA reported that more than 10,000 stimulus checks were sent to the dead. The new ($787 billion stimulus) law provided a one-time payment of $250 for retirees, disabled individuals, and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) recipients.  One would assume that the term “retirees” was meant to describe people retired from the workforce, not people retired from life.

“These are not just the recently deceased of the past few weeks, months, or even a year.  The government sent checks to one individual who had been dead for 42 years.  That’s exactly what 83 year-old James Hagner of Orchard Beach, Maryland learned in May.  He received a check from the U.S. Treasury made out to his mother, Rose, who died in 1967.

“A spokesman for the SSA blamed the problem on the short three-month period they had to get the checks in the mail, claiming it was simply impossible to clean up the agency’s list so quickly . . . “

However, the story doesn’t end there. In fact, it gets worse, as Morse wrote on July 7 at CAGW’s blog, the Swine Line:

“Last week I wrote an article for the June issue of Wastewatcher entitled Stimulating the Dead. Sending stimulus checks to dead people does not help the economy.

“Little did I know that this is not a new practice of the Social Security Administration (SSA).  They have been doing this for years.  What’s worse is that they have known about it for years, but just can’t seem to fix the problem.

“The Inspector General (IG) of the Social Security Administration just issued a report to the Commissioner of a study that began in January of 2008.  That’s right, 18 months ago SSA knew they were sending checks to people that their own files said were deceased.”

Here are the “Results of Review” from the IG’s audit report (Adobe required):

“SSA made payments to more than 6,000 beneficiaries for months or even years after receiving notification the beneficiaries were deceased.  SSA received death reports for these beneficiaries and recorded dates of death on the Numident.  However, SSA did not record the death information on the beneficiary’s payment record or terminate benefit payments to these individuals.  Our audit results indicated that a large percentage of these beneficiaries were actually alive, and that death entries recorded on their Numidents were erroneous.  However, our audit results also indicated that a number of these beneficiaries were deceased, and that dates of death recorded on their Numidents were accurate.

In January 2008, we identified 305 beneficiaries7 who received OASDI and/or SSI payments at the same time their Numident record indicated they were deceased. During our review, we verified the living status of 228 of these 305 beneficiaries. Our review found that 88 of the 228 beneficiaries were, in fact, deceased, and that death information appearing on the Numident was accurate.  In these cases, SSA issued payments to the beneficiaries 2 to 366 months after receiving notification the beneficiary  as deceased.  SSA improperly paid these 88 deceased beneficiaries approximately $2.0 million.  We also confirmed that 140 of the 228 beneficiaries were alive, and the death entries on the Numident were erroneous.  The addition of erroneous death entries can lead to benefit termination, cause severe financial hardship and distress to affected individuals, and result in the publication of living individuals’ PII in the DMF.

“Based on our results, we estimate that as of January 2008, about 6,100 beneficiaries in  current payment status had a date of death recorded on their Numident record.10  We estimate that approximately 1,760 of the 6,100 beneficiaries were actually deceased, and that SSA made approximately $40.3 million in improper payments to the deceased beneficiaries after recording their date of death in SSA’s records.  Further, we estimate SSA would make approximately $6.9 million in additional improper payments over the next 12 months if these discrepancies were not corrected. See Appendix C for a discussion of our Case Results and Estimates.” (emphasis added)

And Americans want Congress and the Administration to impose universal health care? Sheesh!