Audit Finds Dead Consumers Still Getting Social Security Checks

Wait a minute, this is the most relied upon data base in the US that everyone uses, right? Well when you look at it though we still have clerical input errors and some part of the data chain that may not flow together correctly, but we are getting better with transparency in data. The audit came up with 6000 folks that need to be identified and when you look at Social Security as a whole and how many collect, that’s not a big percentage and some were noted going back to the 90s. By contrast though, paying health insurance on dead employees is to me much worse and someone was asleep at the wheel. Didn’t anybody who worked with these folks look for them? Obviously it was the paper and/or data trail here with an HR department who stressed out in their own words and as I understand it, they have to take the insurers who collected premium payments (no medical claims here free and bottom line profit) to court.

City of Buffalo Has Paid Over $2 Million to Provide Health Insurance for Hundreds of Dead People-Some as Many as 4 Years

Probe finds dead doctors used in Medicare scams

Then of course we have all these online doctor referral sites who have their share of dead doctors, retired doctors and just flat out flawed information out there too.

Dead Doctors and Inaccurate MD Listings On the Web Can Be a Real Hunting Ground of Information to Mine For Crooks Relative to Fraudulent Medical Billing

Again, if it came down to 6000 individuals, that’s not a bad percentage at all for all the claims they handle on their old, but still steady as a rock COBOL data system. BD

Pundits and policymakers love to brawl over who should be receiving Social Security benefits--but it's hard to imagine any of them vying for deceased Aunt Edna.

According to a Social Security Inspector General report, $40.3 million in social security benefits have been paid to the dead since 2008. Typically, family members or funeral homes are supposed to notify the Social Security Administration (SSA) that a person has died, at which point the information is put in the SSA’s Death Master File. However, people sometimes fail to report this information and even when they do—the SSA continues to make erroneous payments.

The report finds that the SSA has made payments to more than 6,000 beneficiaries for months or even years after receiving notice that the person has died. The IG estimates that about 1,760 of these people are actually dead—the rest of the entries are mistakes. According to the IG, these erroneous death entries can also lead to “severe financial hardship and distress to affected individuals.”