Social Security payments | Right Wing Granny

Don’t freak out over that headline. The changes I am talking about are good news for everyone who is currently collecting or plans to collect social security in the future.

On Tuesday (updated Wednesday) The Epoch Times reported:

President Donald Trump signed a memorandum on April 15 directing several federal agencies to take measures to prevent Social Security payments from going to ineligible people such as illegal immigrants and fraudsters.

The memorandum was directed at the Social Security Administration inspector general, the Social Security commissioner, the attorney general, and the secretaries of labor, health and human services, and homeland security.

Meanwhile, the commissioner is directed to cooperate with the attorney general to expand the SSA’s full-time fraud prosecutor program specifically targeting identity theft and beneficiary-side fraud to at least 50 U.S. Attorney Offices by Oct. 1.

The memo also “establishes a Medicare and Medicaid fraud prosecution program in 15 U.S. Attorney offices,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said during a press briefing.

Department heads are ordered to prioritize the placement of prosecutors in both programs to the offices whose jurisdiction has been determined by Homeland Security to cover the top 10 largest known populations of illegal immigrants.

The memo also directs the inspector general of the Social Security Administration (SSA) to investigate earnings reports for individuals over the age of 100. Earlier this year the Department of Government Efficiency reported that hundreds of eligible Social Security recipients were found to be well over a century old.

In another article posted Tuesday (updated Wednesday), The Epoch Times reported another change to Social Security:

The Social Security Administration (SSA) has rolled out “enhanced technology” to detect suspicious activity in telephone claims or banking changes. The new technology will strengthen identification verification, preventing fraud.

The SSA had initially planned to roll out new identity proofing policies in March, but pushback from beneficiaries and advocates delayed it. The policies have gone through two changes so far. So, what are these ID proofing policy changes, and how will they affect you?

The second article concludes:

Social Security benefits are often a target of thieves. And diverting benefits from a recipient’s account to a fraudulent one has been going on for many years.

The SSA is making an effort to stop the fraud by modernizing its phone system with enhanced technology. Using the new technology allows the agency to identify anomalies in the claimant’s account.

In addition, the use of the AVS will not only prevent fraudulent banking changes but also expedite processing. Overall, Social Security beneficiaries and new claimants will still have the convenience of phoning while still preventing fraud.

As someone who is married to a person in Information Technology (IT), I am suspicious of any change to a computer program. There are almost always glitches. I am hoping that the new fraud detection protocols have been thoroughly tested. If these new protocols are successful in eliminating the majority of fraud in the Social Security program, they will extend the lifespan of the program for years.

On Saturday, Just the News posted an article about a final audit report of the Social Security Agency by the agency’s Office of Inspector General.

The article reports:

This week’s Golden Horseshoe goes to the Social Security Administration, which paid an estimated $79 million to the deceased in just three states over a 10-year period, according to a final audit report by the agency’s Office of Inspector General.

“We estimate SSA issued approximately $79 million in payments after death to 1,127 beneficiaries and four representative payees who died in Alabama, Georgia, or Illinois between January 1978 and December 2018,” the report found.

The watchdog identified an additional 53,486 deceased non-beneficiaries in those states whose death information was not in the SSA’s Numerical Identification System.

Please follow the link above to read the entire article. It includes examples of payments made to people who have been dead for years.

The article notes:

“In October and November of 2020, we referred to SSA all identified beneficiaries and representative payees who may have received improper payments after death,” the IG reported. “Identifying and correcting these discrepancies will prevent approximately $14 million in additional improper payments after death over a 12-month period.”

The audit was conducted from April to November 2020. As of April 2021, the SSA terminated payments to 832 deceased beneficiaries and four deceased representative payees.

The agency has initiated the recovery of $35 million in improper payments it sent out, the IG reported.

The SSA established the Electronic Death Registration for states to electronically submit death reports to the agency to prevent payments after death. Once states submit through the EDR, if the deceased data matches the agency’s records, then SSA posts the information to its Numident file and terminates payments. SSA also receives death information from other sources aside from EDR, including family members and funeral directors.

It is time for the government to stop wasting taxpayers’ money. If the people who work for the government cannot do a better job of keeping track of who is receiving payments, they should either get a new computer system or new employees. No private company would tolerate that kind of wasteful spending.