Social Security has always been vocal about overpayments and going after overpayments when someone receives Social Security benefits they are not eligible for, but the agency has not been as vocal about what it describes as “potential entitlements,” the agency’s clarification of people who should be eligible to receive benefits, but are not receiving them.
A person who is eligible to receive Social Security benefits, whether it be retirement or disability benefits, can miss out on those benefits due to Social Security errors or just an unawareness of individuals who don’t realize they are missing out on benefits they are eligible for.
The Hill recently issued a story that estimates that children are the most overlooked eligible beneficiaries. According to the story, Social Security discovered that an estimated 20,000 children were not receiving benefits they were eligible for in 2016 and this seems to occur each year. That means that an estimated 200,000 children were not receiving the Social Security benefits they were eligible for over a 10-year period. The more astonishing fact is that, according to The Hill’s story, Social Security never reached out to most of the people they discovered were missing out on benefits. Below is portion of The Hill’s story that describes this oversight.
To date, SSA has still not contacted any of these families to help them receive their benefits. Indeed, a very modest effort to contact families of the initial group of 20,000 children has been postponed year after year. The case of children missing out on benefits is just one example. How many other groups are out there? Quite a few.
If Social Security discovers that tens of thousands of children are missing out on eligible benefits and doesn’t act to correct the problem what is the use of discovering the oversight?
