President Donald Trump has claimed that millions of dead people are collecting Social Security benefits. While this claim is false, the opposite does happen in rare cases: A person is mistakenly declared dead.
This can be devastating to the individual and their family, SSA said in a statement. "Benefits are stopped in the short term which can cause financial hardship until fixed and benefits restored, and the process to prove an erroneous death will always seem too long and challenging."
But the agency stressed that its death records "are highly accurate."
Of the 3 million death reports the SSA receives each year, "less than one-third of 1% are erroneously reported deaths that need to be corrected," according to the statement.
Deaths are reported to Social Security primarily from the states, but also from other sources, including family members, funeral homes, federal agencies and financial institutions.
Citing a 2008 audit report, the IG noted that “SSA receives most death reports from funeral homes or friends/relatives of the deceased. SSA considers such first party death reports to be verified and immediately posts them to the Death Master File.”
If a person suspects that they have been incorrectly listed as deceased on their Social Security record, they should contact their local Social Security office as soon as possible, the agency says.
As to the claims of 110-year-olds cashing checks, blame the database. As the SSA has explained, many Social Security records do not have a date of death. But that does not mean the individual is collecting benefits.
Acting Social Security Commissioner Lee Dudek said on March 6 that SSA was making "significant progress" in correcting "the inconsistencies with missing dates of death” of people 100 years old or older.
Social Security advocates maintain such efforts are a waste of trust fund money and that deceased individuals in SSA's database are not receiving benefits.
Inaccurately Declared Dead
"From what I understand, there has been an uptick in the number of current beneficiaries who have incorrectly reported dead and, as a result, they have had their benefits cut, claw backs have been made in bank accounts and for SSDI beneficiaries, they have been disenrolled from Medicare," Dan Adcock, director of government relations and policy at the National Committee to Preserve Social Security and Medicare, told ThinkAdvisor Monday. "Resolving these matters is taking longer than usual because of the mass layoffs at SSA."
The Seattle Times reported Saturday about a man who was inaccurately declared dead and had his Social Security and Medicare canceled. The circumstances surrounding the man's death "were completely the opposite of what Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency had claimed was rampant," the Times story states.
As SSA said Sunday, "it has historically been quite rare for Social Security to incorrectly list someone as deceased when they are still alive," Nancy Altman, president of Social Security Works, said in another email Monday. "However, when it does happen, it is devastating for these beneficiaries and their families."
Furthermore, "Musk and Donald Trump are making massively inaccurate claims about errors in the other direction, claiming that people who are deceased are getting benefits," Altman continued. "This puts pressure on the agency to chase fraud that doesn't exist."
Calling the effort "wasteful," Altman said it "takes time away from hard-working civil servants to do their real job. And it is happening as Musk's DOGE is laying off and pushing out thousands of workers from SSA, which is already understaffed. This will make these errors more likely in the future. DOGE is creating waste and abuse, and making fraud far more likely."
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