Thursday, June 27, 2013

The Dead keep receiving Social Security Benefits Long after the agency received their Death Notices

The Social Security Administration’s inspector general on Monday said the agency improperly paid $31 million in benefits to 1,546 Americans believed to be deceased. 
And potentially making matters worse for the agency, the inspector general said the Social Security Administration had death certificate information on each person filed in the government database, suggesting it should have known the Americans had died and halted payments. 
Of the 1,546 deceased beneficiaries, the government made payments as if each person was alive for an average of 20 extra months. One beneficiary died in April 2000, the IG said. In February 2001, the Social Security Administration recorded information from the death certificate but kept making a total of $158,000 in payments through May 2012.
The inspector general’s office made a number of recommendations that it says will prevent this from happening again, and the agency has agreed to make changes. 
The Social Security Administration appears to be making some progress in this area. In 2009, the inspector general said the agency was paying benefits to 6,733 people even though death certificate records were on file. However, the IG said Monday that 91 of the Americans identified as deceased in its 2009 audit were still being paid benefits in May 2012.
Read the rest HERE.

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