Mistakes are a natural part of life and certainly the Social Security makes its share of them, but a December 11, 2020 report from Social Security’s inspector general shows that the agency has continued to miss paying people the benefits they deserve. The report showed that Social Security did not pay more than 27,000 eligible beneficiaries more than $50 million in benefits they were owed and more than 17,000 people missed out on more than $90 million in benefits because Social Security could not locate them.
In an opinion piece from the Washington Post many critics of Social Security’s leadership said that the agency is mismanaged and is in need of new leadership. This is something President-Elect Joe Biden will likely consider when he is sworn into office in a few weeks.
Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, an advocacy group that works to improve and maintain benefits said this oversight by Social Security is unacceptable. “It is important to emphasize that these are earned benefits that people are being deprived of through no fault of their own,” Altman said in the article from the Washington Post.
U.S. Rep. John Larson, D-Connecticut, was also not pleased by the report. Larson is the chair of the Social Security subcommittee in the House said he plans to have hearings on this report in January. Larson, in the Washington Post piece said these mistakes by Social Security can’t continue.
“Underpayments are just as important as overpayments,” Larson said “and SSA leaders need to pay as much attention to preventing and correcting underpayments as they do to overpayments.”
Below is a report of the findings and recommendations of the report the inspector general released December 11, 2020.
Findings
SSA did not always take proper actions to pay underpayments due terminated beneficiaries. In December 2015, SSA improved systems controls to pay underpayments due deceased beneficiaries to eligible surviving spouses. However, this control does not identify underpayments due to all terminated beneficiaries. For the100 terminated beneficiaries in our sample, we found
- 39 had underpayments that should be paid to eligible beneficiaries;
- 25 were cases where SSA did not locate the beneficiaries or individuals who were eligible for the underpayments;
- 7 had erroneous underpayments that should have been corrected or removed from the Master Beneficiary Record; and
- 29 were correctly paid or resolved.
This occurred because SSA employees established 74 percent of these underpayments manually, and SSA systems did not generate alerts after they were established. In addition, SSA’s corrective actions to address our prior audit recommendations were not sufficient to ensure it resolved and issued underpayments to eligible beneficiaries or individuals.
Based on our random sample, we estimate SSA did not (1) issue payments to 27,724 eligible beneficiaries or individuals due approximately $52.1 million, (2) locate 17,772 beneficiaries or individuals eligible for approximately $90.4 million in payments, and (3) remove or correct erroneous payments totaling approximately $6.7 million recorded on the Master Beneficiary Record for 4,265 beneficiaries.
Recommendations
We made four recommendations for SSA to take corrective actions for underpayments due terminated beneficiaries. SSA agreed with our recommendations.
