‘Resurrected,’ but still wallowing in red tape

Your government: a serial killer?
In September 2006, the inspector general’s office tried to get a fix on how many people Social Security was improperly killing off by reviewing updates to the agency’s Death Master File.

In all, Social Security officials had to “resurrect” 23,366 people from January 2004 to September 2005. In other words, over a period of 21 months, Social Security was presented with irrefutable evidence that it had been “killing” more than 1,100 people a month, or more than 35 a day.

Two months later, in November 2006, the inspector general looked specifically at 251 cases of people to whom the agency continued to issue checks even though Medicare records said they were dead.

“Of the 251 individuals in our population, 86 are deceased and their SSI payments should be terminated,” the audit said. “The remaining 165 beneficiaries were actually alive and their Medicare benefits—and, in some cases, their SSI payments—were incorrectly terminated.”

That’s 65 percent, which the audit said “can cause undue hardship for the individual[s] and create public relations problems.” Furthermore, it said, erroneous death terminations “also create additional workloads for Agency staff, who must take action to correct the benefit records and resume payments. According to SSA, these cases are ‘... very time sensitive and require immediate action.’”

But one thing Social Security doesn’t do well is immediacy.

The agency processed more than a half-million requests for hearings in fiscal year 2006— of all types, not just those involving wrongful death terminations — the inspector general reported in yet another audit last May. The average processing time for a Social Security hearing in general: 483 days. If a ruling goes to an appeal, tack on another 203 days.

Apart from the horror stories that sometimes pop up in the media, the inspector general’s office offered some of its own. It said, for example, that in November 2005, an 81-year old woman contacted Social Security to report that her Medicare claims were being denied. After the woman made several more attempts to prove she was alive, the agency finally reinstated her benefits in July 2006, eight months after the error was discovered.

A genie that won’t go back in the bottle
Even if you do finally convince the government that you are not dead, your problems aren’t over.

Social Security, it turns out, publishes its death records. The Social Security Death Index is constantly updated and is available to anyone willing to pay for it. Its records show up in any number of places, from public document collections to Web sites for genealogy enthusiasts.

“I thought: ‘That’s just horrible. It’s never going to be over for me,’” said Todd, details of whose “death” can be found on numerous Web sites devoted to genealogy and public records.

Early on, Todd said, she tried to laugh off the mix-up. But not any longer.

“I’m tired. I’ve been fighting this for [many] years, and it never ends,” she said. “I’m very much alive and would like to live out my life in peace without having this problem.”

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