Overpayment Outrage

With his term soon to expire, Social Security chief Martin O’Malley’s efforts to address the agency’s overpayments to beneficiaries remain incomplete.

Commissioner Martin O’Malley testifies to two Senate panels that his agency will stop the “injustices” of suspending people’s monthly benefits to recover alleged overpayments. The burden will be on the Social Security Administration to prove the beneficiary was to blame.

New Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley is promising to change how the agency reclaims billions of dollars it wrongly pays to beneficiaries, saying the existing process is “cruel-hearted and mindless.”

The Social Security Administration is reclaiming billions of dollars in alleged overpayments from some of the nation’s poorest and most vulnerable, leaving some people homeless or struggling to stay in housing, beneficiaries and advocates say.

Acting Commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi sent the letter days after KFF Health News and Cox Media Group reported that the agency has been demanding money back from more than twice as many people as she’d disclosed in October testimony.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), chair of the Senate Finance Committee, vowed to meet monthly with Social Security officials until the problems surrounding overpayment demands are fixed.

In the wake of a KFF Health News-Cox Media Group investigation, U.S. lawmakers are asking what Social Security will do about its demands on their constituents to repay money already distributed — and sometimes in error. Sen. Rick Scott called the agency’s actions “unacceptable.”

Social Security has been overpaying recipients for years, then demanding the money back, leaving people with bills for up to tens of thousands of dollars or more.

At a Senate confirmation hearing, former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley said he would address hardships the Social Security agency has caused by demanding money back from beneficiaries.

Covid relief payments weren’t supposed to cost people their Social Security benefits, but some recipients say they did. Senators want to know why.

Acting Commissioner Kilolo Kijakazi was pressed by a House Ways and Means subcommittee to explain why so many poor, disabled, or retired people are suddenly hit with demands that can reach tens of thousands of dollars or more.

Congress is beginning to take action on the Social Security Administration’s clawbacks of payments it mistakenly made to poor, retired, and disabled Americans.

In the wake of an investigation by KFF Health News and Cox Media Group, the SSA acting commissioner said a special team will review “overpayment policies and procedures” and report directly back to her.

Lawmakers are faulting the Social Security Administration for issuing billions of dollars of payments that beneficiaries weren’t entitled to receive — and then demanding the money back — in the wake of an investigation by KFF Health News and Cox Media Group.