Errors by government workers prevented more than 450,000 Social Security beneficiaries from receiving about $500 million owed to them since 2008.
More than 85 percent of those people were identified in a 2008 Social Security Administration Inspector General audit.
“SSA had not taken sufficient action to pay underpayments due terminated beneficiaries identified in our 2008 audit,” the IG said in a follow-up report released last week.
When the SSA underpays a beneficiary or their survivor, an alert is sent to employees for correction. But if the employees make a mistake or don’t respond, there’s no oversight, according to the IG.
As a result, the government employees didn’t always correct Social Security underpayments.
Consequently, about 56,000 beneficiaries or their survivors never saw $122 million. That’s in addition to $359 million owed 392,000 beneficiaries identified in the 2008 audit.
Additionally, SSA employees did not always remove corrected or verify underpayments. This resulted in about 115,000 terminated beneficiaries erroneously receiving more than $92 million. About 95 percent of these were identified by the IG in 2008.
In the 2008 audit, the IG included six recommendations to improve the underpayment system. The SSA agreed with four.
Officials of the President George W. Bush administration refused to revise the underpayment process due to budgetary constraints, according to the previous audit.
It also issued a reminder for employees to use proper documentation, rather than develop periodic follow-ups, as recommended by the IG.
“Based on the results of our current review, a reminder to staff was not sufficient…” the 2014 report said.
This year, the IG recommended the SSA establish a better alert system and periodic clean-ups of the underpayment records. The SSA agreed to follow all the recommendations this time.
