The Homa Files

The Inspector General for the Social Security Administration released a report on the SSA’s track record for detecting and collecting overpayments – amounts paid to people in excess of what they’re entitled to receive.

Here’s the good news …

“Generally, SSA attempts to collect overpayments regardless of the amount.”

Here’s the bad news …

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“In many cases, the value of the overpayment is less than what SSA spends to collect it.”

Specifically, the IG concluded:

“The SSA spent over $323 million to collect low-dollar overpayments in FYs 2008 through 2013 … SSA collected approximately $109.4 million of the low-dollar overpayments … so, SSA spent over $213.6 million more than it collected.”

Ouch.

To make matters worse, the IG says that the collection costs are understated:

“The average cost to collect an SSI overpayment does not represent the cost of collecting the overpayment when multiple actions are required. This results in an understatement of the average cost to collect an SSI overpayment.”

Double ouch.

I know, this is small potatoes.

But, it’s an on-point example of gov’t efficiency …

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This entry was posted on July 10, 2015 at 6:59 am and is filed under Gov't Waste & Inefficiency, Social Security. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.