Social Security Administration Floats New Waiver Process for Overpayments

Social Security Operations

On March 17, SSA closed more than 1,200 field offices to in-person service, “maximizing employees’ use of telework, and reprioritizing certain manual workloads to stop actions that could, under normal circumstances, have resulted in a reduction, suspension, or termination of benefits or payments under titles II, VIII, or XVI of the Social Security Act,” the organization said.

For instance, SSA “suspended the completion of title XVI redeterminations, a periodic review of an individual’s or couple’s non-medical eligibility factors such as income, resources, and living arrangement, during which our staff ensures that a recipient or couple is still eligible for” SSI payments and is receiving the correct amount of SSI payments.

Because SSA suspended certain actions due to the pandemic, “we did not establish some overpayment debts as timely as we would have if our offices had been operating normally.”

SSA added that it would have “processed manually the debts impacted by this action.” However, “due to our focus on prioritizing other more urgent workloads and reducing stress on the people we serve during the beginning of the pandemic, we did not take action on these types of overpayment debts.”

The lawmakers pointed out that SSA “will waive the overpayment if the individual is without fault in causing the overpayment, and if recovery would defeat the purpose of the program or would be against equity and good conscience. For Supplemental Security Income only, the SSA may also waive the overpayment if it would impede the administration of the program.”