The Office of the Inspector General (OIG) found the Social Security Administration wrote checks for a jaw-dropping $1.1 billion in improper payments for FY2024 and has a “record-breaking backlog” of 5.2 million cases.
At a time when the Social Security Trust Fund is already under severe financial stress, this is no time to have $1.1 billion in bad payments.
In Suffolk County, 18,041 people receive Social Security for a total of $11,263,000 in payments, according to the 2022 data from the Social Security Administration.
When Social Security made its first payment in 1940 there were 23 workers for every recipient. Life expectancy for men on average was just 61 years old for white men, 51 for black men, and women, 65 years.
In 2002, there were just 3.25 workers per recipient and by 2030 this is estimated to be just two workers for each Social Security recipient. Not only are there fewer workers per recipient now, meaning less money being paid into the system, people are living longer putting greater stress on an already stressed system. The average lifespan for women in the US is now 80.5 years for white women, 76.1 for black women, 75.3 for white men, and 69 for black men.
With the stresses of fewer workers paying in and people living substantially longer, the federal government needs to clamp down on not just fraud, but their own mistakes in processing and overpayment.
“Under the Biden/Harris Administration, the Social Security Administration made over a billion dollars in improper payments to beneficiaries, according to the SSA’s Office of Inspector General (OIG). Then the SSA had the audacity to blame the mistake on a lack of funding,” says citizen Viola Leigh.
When the government does find a mistake, the average processing time for cases related to improper payments is an unacceptable 698 days. No one in the private sector gets 698 days to fix a payment or billing mistake. The longer this timeline is the longer anyone underpaid has to wait for proper payment and the longer the government has to wait for anyone overpaid to pay back what they owe.
And, for those overpaid who didn’t know there was a mistake, there is the psychological and financial stress of figuring out how to pay anything back when you are already on a fixed income.
“Here's one reason Social Security will run out of money! Overpayments, which will probably never be repaid. They blame it on not having enough staff. Is there ONE agency that doesn't waste money?” says UpNorth MN on X.
Mismanagement of taxpayer funds abounds across the entire US government. Fourteen agencies reported a total estimated improper payments amount of $236 billion with Medicare and Medicaid making up the largest share. According to the Office of Federal Financial Management, improper payments occur "when the funds go to the wrong recipient, the recipient receives the incorrect amount of funds, or the recipient improperly uses the funds."
Agencies reported that about $175 billion (over 74 percent) of this total was the result of overpayments. About $186 billion (approximately 79 percent) was concentrated in five program areas. The $236 billion total does not include several programs that agencies have determined are susceptible to significant improper payments. The government-wide estimate of improper payments is substantially higher than reported.