The agency managed to collect nearly $5 billion in overpayments in 2023 but collections involve a many-step process of notice and potential appeal. Image: Olesia Bech/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffIn a report on a management issue that is common across federal agencies, improper payments, the inspector general’s office at the SSA has stressed the importance of prevention in addressing what it called “a longstanding challenge for SSA.”
“It is crucial that SSA find ways to prevent improper payments before they occur so it can reduce the administrative and productivity cost it incurs to correct improper payments and devote more resources to other priority workloads,” said the IG in a summary of numerous reports it has issued in recent years.
The report said that while the SSA’s improper payment rate is less than 1 percent, that still represents nearly $72 billion over fiscal 2015-2022. In 2022, for example, there were about $11 billion in overpayments vs. less than $3 billion in underpayments; that is consistent with government-wide figures showing that about three-fourths of improper payments are overpayments—compared to underpayments and insufficiently document payments, which also are fall under the category of improper payments.
While the agency managed to collect nearly $5 billion in overpayments in 2023, it added, collections involve a many-step process of notice and potential appeal, with an administrative cost of about 1 percent of what is collected.
Said the report, “Preventing improper payments is more advantageous than recovering them after they are made because SSA does not have to expend additional resources to recover the overpayments or process additional payments to rectify underpayments. These actions create a burden on beneficiaries, additional work for SSA employees, and administrative costs that strain the Trust Funds.”
One preventative step, it said, would be to better coordinate with state governments to detect whether beneficiaries also are receiving workers’ compensation or disability benefits, rather than rely on beneficiaries to self-report on those benefits, which can trigger a reduction in benefits from SSA.
It also recommended increasing automation and modernizing systems, saying that some benefit payment amounts must be calculated manually by agency employees and “our audits have found the controls designed to ensure SSA completes these manual processes accurately and timely are not always effective.”
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