The Social Security Administration, the independent federal agency administering Social Security payments, announced on March 20 the four steps it is taking to immediately address its overpayment problem.
Last year, the agency came under fire from lawmakers and members of the public after an investigation found it had asked for billions of dollars back from beneficiaries, including some of the most vulnerable Americans, following overpayments.
An overpayment within the Social Security program is determined when the agency decides beneficiaries were not eligible to receive money that had already been paid to them.
Following the investigation, a House Ways and Means subcommittee held a hearing probing how the agency handled overpayments, and the SSA promised to review its procedures around benefit overpayments.
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Wednesday, the agency announced that, beginning on March 25, it would stop its practice of intercepting 100 percent of an overpaid beneficiary’s monthly Social Security benefit by default if they failed to respond to the SSA’s demand for repayment. At the moment, an overpayment can be recovered by making deductions from the beneficiaries’ payments or taking the amount directly out of the beneficiaries’ wages.
On top of this measure, the SSA will be “reframing” its guidance and procedures so that “the burden of proof shifts away from the claimant in determining whether there is any evidence that the claimant was at fault in causing the overpayment,” the SSA said in a statement.
The agency has also changed its policy so that it would approve repayment plans of up to 60 months, from an initial 36 months, for those who request one. This would depend on beneficiaries—excluding those in the means-tested Supplemental Security Income program—providing a verbal summary of their income, resources and expenses.
The fourth step is to make it “much easier” for beneficiaries who have been asked to repay an overpayment to request a waiver of said payment if they believe themselves to be without any fault, or if they are unable to repay the amount requested.
Newsweek contacted the SSA for comment by email outside of normal working hours.
Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley testified before the U.S. Senate Special Committee on Aging and the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance Wednesday, saying the agency was trying to address “the root causes of these administrative errors” that cause “these individual injustices” for beneficiaries.
“Despite our best efforts, we sometimes get it wrong and pay beneficiaries more than they are due, creating an overpayment,” O’Malley said.
He added: “When that happens, Congress requires that we make every effort to recover those overpaid benefits. But doing so without regard to the larger purpose of the program can result in grave injustices to individuals, as we see from the stories of people losing their homes or being put in dire financial straits when they suddenly see their benefits cut off to recover a decades-old overpayment, or disability beneficiaries attempting to work and finding their efforts rewarded with large overpayments. Innocent people can be badly hurt. And these injustices shock our shared sense of equity and good conscience as Americans.”
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