Audit finds Social Security Administration still hasn't fixed underpayments
In a recent audit, 71,088 terminated beneficiaries were identified that were owed underpayments totaling $155 million.
The Social Security Administration did not always take appropriate actions to rectify underpayments due to terminated beneficiaries, according to an audit conducted by the SSA’s Office of the Inspector General between October 2019 and August 2020. The audit recommended SSA improve its controls to ensure underpayments are accurately paid going forward and to rectify existing underpayments.
An underpayment is any monthly benefit due to a beneficiary that SSA has not paid, including unpaid accrued monthly benefits, uncashed checks to deceased beneficiaries, and returned payments. Terminated beneficiaries include both living and dead individuals who are no longer receiving benefits.
The purpose of the audit was to determine whether the SSA took appropriate action to pay underpayments and improve controls following a prior audit in 2014. During that audit, the SSA-OIG found 55,925 terminated beneficiaries had $122.6 million in underpayments that should have been paid to eligible beneficiaries, and 5,687 erroneous underpayments totalling $5.2 million that should have been removed from the Master Beneficiary Record (MBR).
Following the 2014 audit, several corrective actions were recommended and clean-up processes were implemented, including identifying and automatically sending underpayments less than $2,500 to surviving spouses. Additional clean-up processes were implemented in 2016, 2018 and 2019, however the improved controls do not identify underpayments over $2,500, benefits due to deceased beneficiaries who have no surviving spouse on record, benefits due to deceased beneficiaries who were terminated before 2011, or underpayments due to living beneficiaries.
In its most recent audit, the SSA-OIG identified 71,088 terminated beneficiaries due underpayments totaling $155 million, including 27,126 deceased beneficiaries with $61 million in underpayments that may be payable to surviving beneficiaries and 43,962 living beneficiaries who had $94 million in underpayments.
The audit sampled 100 underpayments from the most recent audit and 50 from the previous audit to determine if corrective actions were taken and effective. Based on the analysis of those samples, the audit found SSA did not issue underpayments to 27,724 eligible beneficiaries or individuals who were owed about $52.1 million, locate or contact 17,772 beneficiaries or individuals eligible for about $90.4 million in underpayments, or remove or correct erroneous underpayments recorded on the MBR for 4,265 beneficiaries totaling about $6.7 million.
The SSA-OIG found this occurred because SSA employees established 74 percent of these underpayments manually, which meant SSA systems did not generate alerts or reminders after they were established. The agency’s automated system is designed to identify underpayments for terminated beneficiaries, record them as a special payment amount on the MBR and produce a one-time alert for SSA employees to determine whether they should issue an underpayment. When the automated system cannot process underpayments, SSA employees manually process and issue the underpayment.
In addition, SSA employees did not always take action to issue underpayments, locate beneficiaries or individuals eligible for underpayments, or ensure underpayments recorded in the MBR were correct or valid.
The audit provided four recommendations for the SSA to take to rectify existing underpayments and further improve the underpayment process, all of which SSA agreed to. These include:
- Taking action to pay underpayments to eligible beneficiaries for the 85 terminated beneficiaries identified by the audit;
- Removing or correcting the erroneous underpayments on the MBR for the 10 beneficiaries identified by the audit;
- Identifying and taking action on the population of terminated beneficiaries with underpayments payable to eligible beneficiaries and individuals; and
- Revising its alerts or clean-up project operation to identify and resolve underpayments for terminated beneficiaries.
Kristen Beckman is a freelance writer based in Colorado. She previously was a writer and editor for ALM’s Retirement Advisor magazine and LifeHealthPro online channel. She also was a reporter for Business Insurance magazine covering workers compensation topics. Kristen graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in journalism.
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