06:19<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nSearch for reliable numbers<\/h2>\n At an October 18\u00a0hearing, Carey brought up the number of debtors and told Kijakazi, “I think it’s something that we really need to get to the bottom of.”<\/p>\n
Then he asked, “Do we have a number of how many people have been impacted by these overpayments?”<\/p>\n
“We do,” Kijakazi replied. “And I’m, I looked at that before I came. I’m, I’m sorry. I’m not thinking of the number right now. But I can provide that.”<\/p>\n
Carey pressed further.<\/p>\n
“How many people are receiving overpayment notices in a year?” he asked.<\/p>\n
At that point, Tom Klouda, a deputy SSA commissioner, got up from his seat behind Kijakazi and handed her a piece of paper.<\/p>\n
Reading from the page, she gave two precise numbers: 1,028,389 for the 2022 fiscal year and 986,912 for the 2023 fiscal year.<\/p>\n
When Carey asked if 986,912 “individuals were getting these letters in the mail saying that there was an overpayment and that they needed to contact you guys and set up a payment plan,” Kijakazi said, “That’s right.”<\/p>\n
“Seems like an awful lot,” Carey said.<\/p>\n
Under further questioning from Carey, Kijakazi repeated the numbers. She said they were “under Social Security” and “for Social Security.”<\/p>\n
Subsequently, the agency declined to clarify what Kijakazi meant by that. Replying to a series of emails, Tiggemann would not say whether the numbers included all the Social Security programs.<\/p>\n
Instead, she implied the agency didn’t know.<\/p>\n
“Again, our overpayment systems were not designed to easily determine the information you’re requesting,” she wrote on November 29.<\/p>\n
SSI overpayment numbers omitted from Kijakazi testimony<\/h2>\n The document obtained via FOIA shows that the numbers Kijakazi gave at the hearing covered only two of the three Social Security benefit programs. They did not cover Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, which provides financial support for people who have little or no income or assets and are blind, otherwise disabled, or at least 65 years old.<\/p>\n
On the paper that the deputy commissioner handed Kijakazi, overpayment counts for SSI appeared directly below the numbers she read aloud, and they were bigger: 1,118,648 people in fiscal 2022 and 1,189,642 in fiscal 2023.<\/p>\n
The document is titled in part, “Overpayment Basic Facts.”<\/p>\n
In the document, the numbers Kijakazi read at the hearing, which round to about 1 million people a year, are labeled “T2.” Title II of the Social Security Act covers two programs: Disability Insurance, or DI, and Old-Age and Survivors Insurance, or OASI.<\/p>\n
The numbers Kijakazi omitted are labeled “T16.” Title XVI of the Social Security Act covers SSI.<\/p>\n
Within the Social Security Administration, personnel use the term T16 when referring to SSI and T2 when referring to OASI and DI combined, said Romig, the former agency researcher.<\/p>\n
It’s possible that some people who received overpayment notices through SSI also received notices through the other programs, leading to overlap between the numbers Kijakazi read at the hearing and those she didn’t provide, Romig said.<\/p>\nKilolo Kijakazi, the Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner, testified at a House Ways and Means subcommittee hearing on October 18 about the administration’s payment clawbacks.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n U.S. HOUSE COMMITTEE ON WAYS AND MEANS<\/p>\n
<\/span>
In the 2023 fiscal year, the agency paid SSI benefits to an average of 7.5 million recipients a month. Measured in dollars, the overpayment rate in SSI has been running about 8%, according to the agency’s latest annual financial report. That’s much higher than the half a percent overpayment rate for OASI and DI combined.<\/p>\n
A written statement Kijakazi submitted to the House subcommittee included a clue that the numbers of people she gave the committee didn’t provide a complete picture. In the statement, dated October 18, Kijakazi used the term “the Social Security program itself” to describe Disability Insurance and Old-Age and Survivors Insurance \u2014 but not SSI.<\/p>\n
A press\u00a0release\u00a0the Ways and Means Committee issued after the hearing made no such distinction. “One Million Americans a Year Affected by Social Security’s Improper Payment Highlights Need for Reform,” it said.<\/p>\n
The document obtained via FOIA included other new information. It showed that relatively few beneficiaries contest overpayment notices and that many appeals or requests for waivers fail.<\/p>\n
Weeks after KFF Health News and CMG television stations published and broadcast the first stories in their series, the Social Security chief\u00a0ordered\u00a0a review of overpayments.<\/p>\n
In her statement December 5, the agency spokesperson said that, as part of the review, the Social Security Administration is “looking at how best to inform the Agency, the public, and Congress about this workload.”<\/p>\n
KFF Health News (formerly known as Kaiser Health News, or KHN)<\/em>\u00a0is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at\u00a0<\/em>KFF<\/em>\u00a0(Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n
More from CBS News<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n<\/aside>\n <\/div>\n[ad_2]\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[ad_1] The Social Security Administration has demanded money back from more than 2 million people a year \u2014 more than twice as many people as the head of the agency disclosed at an October congressional hearing. That’s according to a document KFF Health News and Cox Media Group obtained through a Freedom of Information Act …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14737"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14737"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14737\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14737"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14737"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/farratanews.online\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14737"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}