(Opinion Bloomberg) – For more than a decade, the General Inspector of Social Security has been trying to get people dead from the profit rolls. The attempt began before the former corporate lawyer Gail Ennis was taking work in 2019, appointed by President Donald Trump, but received speed. This work has consisted mainly in audits that compare social security data to death data held by states, other federal agencies and even the basics of various social security data.
In a connected but somewhat different audit that has been in the news recently, Ennis in 2023 too watches 18.9 million notes in the “Numidident” Master's File of the Social Security Administration of all certain social security numbers that had (1) a year of birth of 1920 or earlier, and (2) no record of death. Since 2020, only 86,000 Americans were elderly, leaving about 18.8 million dead people who were not listed as dead from social security. As you may have heard, these unfair lubricants were recently discovered by Elon Musk's government efficiency department with Musk implicit and President Trump by fully pretending that tens of millions of dead people are collecting social security benefits.
This is false. My social security number is in the file file, and if you have one, yours is too. This does not mean that we are receiving benefits. Ennis, who was, remember, a name of Trump-discovered that a 44,000 with a loud reasonable voice from those with birth dates in 1920 or earlier were actually receiving social security payments. In 2015, its predecessor, Patrick P. O'Carroll Jr. (an appointed George W. Bush), had watches Those with the dates of birth of the numbers before June 16, 1901, making them older than any well -known person alive at the time, and found 6.5 million without registered deaths, but only 266 benefits, but 13 of which have had incorrect birth dates in the file.
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Almost everyone else had died and their benefits had interrupted many decades ago before social security developed their current electronic death reporting system. Both Ennis and O'Carroll asked the Social Security Administration to do something about these millions of inactive but officially living accounts holders, but agency officials opposed the update of all registers would cost millions of dollars and would result in little or no decrease in benefits.
Comparisons of the death record made by the Office of the Inspector General, on the other hand, have led SSA to update records and interrupt the benefits of thousands (dead). They offer an attractive window of how big the problem of dead social security receivers is actually, and how much work it takes to fix it. At least 38 of these audits have been carried out since 2014, with the results that usually go something like DRILL with 16.1 million death records in California from 1905 to 2017 that was completed in 2021. Found:
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245 people dead, whose children or spouses or others with access to their bank accounts were still receiving their benefits, which the Social Security Administration canceled.
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52 beneficiaries “who seem to be felt” that SSA was still looking.
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438,460 people who were ranked as dead from California and not social security but were not receiving social security benefits.
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89 people who were listed as dead in California's data, but were still alive, though 12 of them died while SSA was being controlled in their issues.
The Inspector General estimated that $ 21.3 million was paid in error for 245 dead, and an additional $ 8.3 million for the 52 dead dead. This particular audit report did not enter into detail about 89 people mistakenly listed as dead but others offered FUN COMMENTARY as is:
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“A summary of the OI stipulated that the beneficiary was not dead based on interviews with family members and the beneficiary.”
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“SSA determined that he had mistakenly released the same SSN for two people.”
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“SSA stated that a beneficiary is likely alive and victim of an identity thief.”
Totals I added from all the matches match were:
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44,152 people dead or perhaps dead who were receiving benefits or received them after death.
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$ 875 million in improper or perhaps improper social security payments.
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834,612 dead or maybe dead people who did not be ranked as such in the file file but also not receiving benefits.
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726 people who were ranked somewhere dead but were actually alive.
This does not represent an exhaustive accounting, of course. There are still 23 states that have not had data on their death compared to social security, there are probably undiscovered data errors and some deaths that are not recorded anywhere, plus people continue to die. But the above amounts give an understanding of the degree of the problem. In a country where more than 3 million people die each year and social security pay more than $ 1.3 trillion benefits, it doesn't look too big.
Alsosh also mainly in the past tense: more than half of people dead and almost a quarter of the payments estimated were from a single Audit From the recipients, whose benefits had already been suspended because SSA suspected they had died but had not marked them as dead in the file file or tried to collect excessive payments. In audits that identified continuous improper payments, SSA quickly acted to stop them, saving about $ 150 million in 12 months after audits.
Of course, there are other sources of possible social security fraud. More continuing seems to include providing disability insurance and supplementary safety income programs, where verification that recipients meet acceptability requirements is a more expensive process and requires time than controlling if people are dead, with financial or political costs or both sometimes exceed benefits. A general inspector report From 2015, for example, revealed that from 2008 to 2013, SSA spent $ 323 million raising $ 109.4 million in low -paying dollars (designated as excessive payments less than the average cost of recovery of an excessive payment), most of them for supplementary security revenues. And Inspector General Ennis stow last year serious stroke by an anti -fraud program run by its office that collected large fines IN disapproval Benefit payments recipients. Surely there are more that can be made to fight fraud at the agency. It just doesn't seem to have a lot of light choices.
What about all those a hundred years of unworthy – for whom there are now 20.8 million number Released from Musk – in the Social Security Number file? Why are they not yet marked as dead after numerous attempts by the general inspectors to make it happen?
The reasons given by SSA officials have been that increased death information in all registrations would cost a lot (5.5 million to $ 9.7 million, it estimated in 2015), require regulatory changes to perform, result in possible issuance of personal information about people still living publicly available available to agency Death Master's file and “be with little benefit to the agency” because little if any pay will go to dead people born before 1920.
In their reports, Ennis and O'Carroll both objected that inaccurate data imposed costs on government agencies and financial institutions based on social security death data, as these inactive accounts are easy objectives for theft. Between 2006 and 2011, 66,920 of social security numbers registered for people born in 1901 or earlier had salaries, advice and self-employment income-related that people were born much later than that, and probably had no authorization to work in the US, they used them to get a job. Between 2016 and 2020, 139,211 of the numbers recorded for people born in 1920 or earlier.
These 206,1131 workers reported $ 11.6 billion in revenue, which implies for another possible reason that the Social Security Administration has not been super-aggressive for cleaning dead people and other strange entrances from the $ 1.4 billion-billion tax on salary taxes. These people will not receive benefits as SSA has moved all profits in her Folderso their contributions essentially Represent free money for the Social Security Fund.
This money may not have been worth all the destruction that Musk & Co. They are now destroying the social security reputation, however. As with people dead in voter rolls, who have hardly been found to have voted but are regularly quoted by those who wish to plant doubts about the integrity of the election, millions of dead people without a record death in the file file are an obligation that the Social Security Administration may no longer allow.
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