It can be difficult to explain Social Security’s Representative Payee program, but essentially it involves someone appointed by Social Security to manage Social Security benefits for someone Social Security determines to be incapable of managing their own benefits. Typically a payee will consist of a trusted relative or agency that is given the task of managing benefits for someone who suffers from specific impairments that would limit their ability to manage their own funds.
The program is supposed to protect the benefits of vulnerable Americans, which obviously is a good idea, but a recent report completed by the Office of the Inspector General indicated that there were a total of 381 Social Security beneficiaries who were serving as representative payees for other beneficiaries even though these representative payees were determined to be incapable of managing their own benefits. This is like asking someone who is incapable of monitoring their own medications to monitor medications for someone else. This just makes no sense. No one who is incapable of managing their own benefits should be in charge of managing someone else’s. These 381 representative payees were responsible for $6.3 million paid out to beneficiaries. Needless to say, the OIG recommended that Social Security correct this oversight, which the Social Security Administration concurred with.
The report also found that more than $53 million was paid to representative payees who did not have a verified Social Security number, Representative Payee Service record or even an application supporting their selection as a representative for 812 beneficiaries. One has to wonder how these payees ended up being payees? The problem with these mistakes is that unqualified representative payees will make it much more likely that a vulnerable payee’s benefits are used for something other than the well being of the beneficiary and that is unacceptable.
