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Former bureau caput connected preserving Social Security
Rennie Glasgow, who has served 15 years astatine the Social Security Administration, is seeing thing caller connected the job: dormant people.
They're not truly dead, of course. In 4 instances implicit the past fewer weeks, helium told KFF Health News, his Schenectady, New York, bureau has seen radical travel successful for whom "there is nary accusation connected the record, conscionable that they are dead." So employees person to "resurrect" them — affirm that they're living, truthful they tin person their benefits.
Revivals were "sporadic" before, and there's been an uptick successful specified cases crossed upstate New York, said Glasgow. He is besides an authoritative with the American Federation of Government Employees, the national that represented 42,000 Social Security employees conscionable earlier the commencement of President Trump's 2nd term.
Martin O'Malley, who led the Social Security Administration toward the extremity of the Biden administration, said successful an interrogation that helium had heard akin stories during a caller municipality hallway successful Racine, Wisconsin. "In that country of 200 people, 2 radical raised their hands and said they each had a person who was wrongly marked arsenic deceased erstwhile they're precise overmuch alive," helium said.
It's much than conscionable an inconvenience, due to the fact that different institutions trust connected Social Security numbers to bash business, Glasgow said. Being declared dormant "impacts their slope account. This impacts their insurance. This impacts their quality to work. This impacts their quality to get thing done successful society."
"They are terminating people's fiscal lives," O'Malley said.
Though it's conscionable 1 of the things advocates and lawyers interest about, these erroneous deaths travel aft a brace of initiatives from caller enactment astatine the SSA to change oregon update its databases of the surviving and the dead.
Holders of millions of Social Security numbers person been marked arsenic deceased. Separately, according to The Washington Post and The New York Times, thousands of numbers belonging to immigrants person been purged, cutting them disconnected from banks and commerce, successful an effort to promote these radical to "self-deport."
Glasgow said SSA employees received an bureau email successful April astir the purge, instructing them however to resurrect beneficiaries wrongly marked dead. "Why don't you conscionable bash owed diligence to marque definite what you're doing successful the archetypal spot is correct?" helium said.
The incorrectly marked deaths are conscionable a portion of the Trump administration's clang programme purporting to basal retired fraud, modernize technology, and unafraid the program's future.
But KFF Health News' interviews with much than a twelve beneficiaries, advocates, lawyers, existent and erstwhile employees, and lawmakers suggest the overhaul is making the bureau worse astatine its superior job: sending checks to seniors, orphans, widows, and those with disabilities.
Philadelphian Lisa Seda, who has cancer, has been struggling for weeks to benignant retired her 24-year-old niece's difficulties with Social Security's disablement security program. There are 2 problems: first, trying to alteration her niece's address; second, trying to fig retired wherefore the programme is deducting astir $400 a period for Medicare premiums, erstwhile her disablement lawyer — whose steadfast has a argumentation against speaking connected the grounds — believes they could beryllium zero.
Since March, sometimes Social Security has direct-deposited payments to her niece's slope relationship and different times mailed checks to her aged address. Attempting to benignant that retired has been a morass of agelong telephone calls connected clasp and in-person trips seeking an appointment.
Before 2025, getting the bureau to process changes was usually straightforward, her lawyer said. Not anymore.
The request is dire. If the bureau halts the niece's disablement payments, "then she volition beryllium homeless," Seda recalled telling an bureau employee. "I don't cognize if I'm going to past this crab oregon not, but determination is cipher other to assistance her."
Some of the problems are technological. According to whistleblower accusation provided to Democrats connected the House Oversight Committee, the agency's efforts to process definite information person been failing much frequently. When that happens, "it tin hold oregon adjacent halt payments to Social Security recipients," the committee precocious told the agency's inspector general.
While tech experts and erstwhile Social Security officials pass astir the imaginable for a implicit strategy crash, day-to-day decay tin beryllium an insidious and superior problem, said Kathleen Romig, formerly of the Social Security Administration and its advisory committee and presently the manager of Social Security and disablement argumentation astatine the Center connected Budget and Policy Priorities. Beneficiaries could conflict to get appointments oregon the wealth they're owed, she said.
For its much than 70 cardinal beneficiaries nationwide, Social Security is crucial. More than a 3rd of recipients said they wouldn't beryllium capable to spend necessities if the checks stopped coming, according to a January survey from the National Academy of Social Insurance.
Advocates and lawyers accidental lately Social Security is failing to deliver, to a grade that's astir unprecedented successful their experience.
Carolyn Villers, enforcement manager of the Massachusetts Senior Action Council, said 2 of her members' March payments were respective days late. "For 1 subordinate that meant not being capable to wage rent connected time," she said. "The delayed outgo is not thing I've heard successful the past 20 years."
When KFF Health News presented the bureau with questions, Social Security officials passed them disconnected to the White House. White House spokesperson Elizabeth Huston referred to Mr. Trump's "resounding mandate" to marque authorities much efficient.
"He has promised to support societal security, and each recipient volition proceed to person their benefits," Huston said successful an email. She did not supply specific, on-the-record responses to questions.
Complaints astir missed payments are mushrooming. The Arizona lawyer general's bureau had received astir 40 complaints related to delayed oregon disrupted payments by aboriginal April, spokesperson Richie Taylor told KFF Health News.
A Connecticut bureau assisting radical connected Medicare said complaints related to Social Security — which often helps administer payments and enroll patients successful the authorities security programme chiefly for those implicit property 65 — had astir doubled successful March compared with past year.
Lawyers representing beneficiaries accidental that, portion the historically underfunded bureau has ever had its stock of errors and inefficiencies, it's getting worse arsenic experienced employees person been fto go.
"We're seeing much mistakes being made," said James Ratchford, a lawyer successful West Virginia with 17 years' acquisition representing Social Security beneficiaries. "We're seeing much things get dropped."
What gets dropped, sometimes, are records of basal transactions. Kim Beavers of Independence, Missouri, tried to implicit a periodic ritual successful February: filling retired a disablement update signifier saying she remains incapable to work. But her scheduled payments successful March and April didn't show.
She got an in-person assignment to untangle the occupation — lone to beryllium told determination was nary grounds of her submission, contempt her showing printouts of the applicable documents to the bureau representative. Beavers has a caller assignment scheduled for May, she said.
Social Security employees often mention missing records to explicate their inability to lick problems erstwhile they conscionable with lawyers and beneficiaries. A disablement lawyer whose firm's argumentation does not let them to beryllium named had a peculiarly puzzling case: One client, a longtime Social Security disablement recipient, had her benefits reassessed. After winning connected appeal, the lawyer went backmost to the bureau to person the payments restored — the recipient had been going without since February. But determination was thing there.
"To beryllium told they've ne'er been paid benefits earlier is conscionable chaos, right? Unconditional chaos," the lawyer said.
Researchers and lawyers accidental they person a suspicion astir what's down the problems astatine Social Security: the Elon Musk-led effort to revamp the agency.
Some 7,000 SSA employees person reportedly been fto go; O'Malley has estimated that 3,000 much would permission the agency. "As the workloads spell up, the demoralization becomes deeper, and radical pain retired and leave," helium predicted successful an April hearing held by House Democrats. "It's going to mean that if you spell to a tract office, you're going to spot a heck of a batch much empty, closed windows."
The departures person deed the agency's determination outgo centers hard. These centers assistance process and adjudicate immoderate cases. It's the benignant of behind-the-scenes enactment successful which "the problems aboveground first," Romig said. But if the unit doesn't person capable time, "those things languish."
Languishing tin mean, successful immoderate cases, getting dropped by important programs similar Medicare. Social Security often automatically deducts premiums, oregon different administers payments, for the wellness program.
Lately, Melanie Lambert, a elder advocator astatine the Center for Medicare Advocacy, has seen an expanding fig of cases successful which the bureau determines beneficiaries beryllium wealth to Medicare. The currency is sent to the outgo centers, she said. And the checks "just beryllium there."
Beneficiaries suffer Medicare, and "those terminations besides thin to hap sooner than they should, based connected Social Security's ain rules," putting radical into a bureaucratic maze, Lambert said.
Employees' exertion is much often connected the fritz. "There's issues each azygous time with our system. Every day, astatine a definite time, our strategy would spell down automatically," said Glasgow, of Social Security's Schenectady office. Those problems began successful mid-March, helium said.
The caller problems permission Glasgow suspecting the worst. "It's much enactment for little bodies, which volition yet hype up the inefficiency of our occupation and marque us, marque the agency, look arsenic though it's underperforming, and past a person measurement to the privatization of the agency," helium said.
Jodie Fleischer of Cox Media Group contributed to this report.
KFF Health News is simply a nationalist newsroom that produces in-depth journalism astir wellness issues and is 1 of the halfway operating programs astatine KFF — the autarkic root for wellness argumentation research, polling, and journalism.
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