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Thursday, August 06, 2015

Social Security Overpaid $371.5 Million in Disability Benefits

SSA overpaid some individuals for more than a decade, totaling $100,000 per person

The Social Security Administration (SSA) overpaid individuals a total of $371.5 million in disability benefits from fiscal year 2009 through fiscal 2013, according to a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report.

These overpayments are cause for concern, as the Social Security’s Disability Insurance Trust Fund is expected to go broke by 2016, according to SSA’s 2015 annual report.

“During a time of growing concern about the solvency of the DI trust fund, it is important for SSA to take every opportunity to help improve the financial status of the program,” the GAO said. The report examined how these concurrent Federal Employees’ Compensation Act (FECA) payments affect Disability Insurance (DI) overpayments.

The GAO found that SSA did not detect concurrent FECA payments for about 1,040 individuals during at least one month from July 1, 2011, through June 30, 2014.

To test SSA’s internal controls, GAO randomly selected 20 beneficiaries for review. In all 20 cases, SSA’s controls failed to detect and prevent overpayments. In seven of the cases, SSA did not detect overpayments for more than a decade, and each of these individuals received $100,000 in overpaid benefits.

More here

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

If it can be shown that fraudulent claims were filed - throw them in jail...if it can be shown that the claim was approved inappropriately - fire the civil servants and their supervisors. Then file a claim with your business insurance against your Errors and Omissions portion (like real businesses are required to have).

Don't ask the taxpayers to fork out more to cover your incompetences....shut down the affirmative action hiring practices and hire good people - pay them what they're worth and hold them accountable for job performance.

Anonymous said...

half the people that I know that get this benefit could be working.

Anonymous said...

I tried to turn in fakers, and was told to mind my own business by the woman at the desk. I had photo's, dates, their names, all done for them to start up an investigation, she said I could be charged for stalking for doing this. She made me feel like a criminal instead of the fakers!

Anonymous said...

That's because she needs more people to explain her job. Should go to states attorney.

Anonymous said...

Make sense and thanks to Clinton we have people who never worked a day collecting.