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SSA Can’t Collect Overpayments Without Wasting Money
Washington Free Beacon ^ | July 3, 2015 5:00 am | Elizabeth Harrington

Posted on 07/04/2015 12:23:41 AM PDT by Olog-hai

The Social Security Administration (SSA) spends more money than it collects when trying to recover payments to individuals who received benefits for which they were not eligible.

According to the Office of Inspector General (OIG), the SSA issued $128.3 million in “low-dollar” overpayments between 2008 and 2013, and then spent $323 million to collect them. The agency ultimately recovered only $109.4 million. “This resulted in SSA spending over $213.6 million more than it collected,” the OIG said, in an audit released Wednesday. […]

The overpayments were distributed through the SSA’s Retirement and Survivors Insurance (RSI), Disability Insurance (DI), and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programs. The SSA issued approximately $16.8 billion in disability insurance overpayments alone in the past decade. …

(Excerpt) Read more at freebeacon.com ...


TOPICS: Crime/Corruption; Government; Miscellaneous
KEYWORDS: oig; overpayments; ssa; ssfraud

1 posted on 07/04/2015 12:23:42 AM PDT by Olog-hai
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To: Olog-hai

The beauty is that while SSA spends more of what they supposedly don’t have, you don’t have enough to get caught. Without that mutually assured destruction of your personal economy, what is to stop everyone from fraud?


2 posted on 07/04/2015 3:11:56 AM PDT by Jumper
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To: Olog-hai

The old adage “ ... We lose money on every one sold, but we make it up on volume ...”


3 posted on 07/04/2015 3:51:56 AM PDT by jamaksin
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To: Olog-hai

Greek Tragedy in the making here...


4 posted on 07/04/2015 4:05:40 AM PDT by GGpaX4DumpedTea (I am a Tea Party descendant...steeped in the Constitutional Republic given to us by the Founders)
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To: Olog-hai

What do they care? It’s not their money.


5 posted on 07/04/2015 4:05:44 AM PDT by Organic Panic
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To: Olog-hai

What ever.happened to the civil service exam that that all prospective government workers had to pass?

It appears that, like our immigration laws, it has been ignored or debased.

Our government -included Congress- is composed of people who are focused only on themselves. Worse, they are mostly incompetent and all of them are corrupt.


6 posted on 07/04/2015 4:25:11 AM PDT by gartrell bibberts ( 50% + of Americans are of below average intelligence today, and have no sense of honesty.)
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To: Olog-hai

I worked at SSA at the time the SSI program was initiated. I worked in the statistical end of things not in the actual application, calculation and payment part of the program. The idea was to supplement the income of those who didn’t have anything. The ruling from the higher ups was that if you weren’t sure of how much a person should get give them the higher amount. When it was determined they were getting too much you couldn’t reduce the payment and since they didn’t have anything you obviously couldn’t collect any overpayment. The big push was to reduce the % of initial overpayments. However, since you couldn’t collect what was already overpayed or reduce the amount those already being overpayed were getting, the total $ of overpayments would always increase. The average worker bee realized this, pointed out the conflicts/inconsitencies in the prodeedures, etc but were ignored. The stupid rules, made by stupid lawmakers and high admin officials always leads to the blame being placed at the level of those who are required to follow the rules.
As a Navy disbursung office the rule was: “When in doubt, screw the member!” Pay the lower amount not the higher one. Just the reverse of the SSI rule. Always better to tell someone: “ Here’s another $XXX that I owe you.”


7 posted on 07/04/2015 4:51:22 AM PDT by Nuocmam
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To: jamaksin

Guess the word, pre-emptive isn’t in their dictionary.

Don’t let it out the door in the first place.

High paid idiots.


8 posted on 07/04/2015 7:28:23 AM PDT by George from New England (escaped CT in 2006, now living north of Tampa)
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To: Olog-hai

this isn’t going to change until the money runs out......................


9 posted on 07/04/2015 7:35:40 AM PDT by PeterPrinciple (Thinking Caps are no longer being issued but there must be a warehouse full of them somewhere.)
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To: Olog-hai

This seems crazy to me. They have people working at SSA getting a regular paycheck who are (supposedly)keeping track of this stuff. Why should it cost extra to cut off funds where there shouldn’t be any funds going?


10 posted on 07/04/2015 9:15:55 AM PDT by oldtech
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To: oldtech

It is “crazy”. It is the government and government “workers”. When have they done anything without exhorbitant costs? I guess that is why we are at least $20,000,000,000,000.00 or so in debt. They all feel that it isn’t their money so what difference does it make.


11 posted on 07/04/2015 3:15:52 PM PDT by hal ogen (First Amendment or Reeducation Camp?)
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