Social Security says it will go back to collecting 100% of overpayments to beneficiaries

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The Social Security Administration said it is reinstating a plan to recover 100% of overpayments to beneficiaries.

This erases a policy the agency had changed last year after dozens of people complained that taking those monthly benefits away was leaving them financially strapped and for some even homeless  In a statement, SSA said late Friday that it will increase the default overpayment withholding rate for Social Security recipients to 100% of a person’s monthly benefit, the same level that it had in place before last year’s reform.

9 investigates, along with COX Media stations across the country, and KFF Health News has been investigating the overpayments.

We found that many of the overpayments were caused by government accounting mistakes and of no fault of the beneficiary.

For 18 months, we have worked to get their accounts straighten out.

That included a push for change in how the overpayments were collected. Because of public backlash on overpayment recovery, the agency capped the withholding rate for someone who had been overpaid at 10% of the person’s monthly benefit.

But now, the SSA said it will start claiming 100% of benefit checks to cover new cases of overpayments, while the withholding rate for people with overpayments before March 27 will remain at 10%, as will the rate for overpayments for Supplemental Security Income, a program for low-income seniors and disabled Americans.

The SSA writing, “People who are overpaid after March 27 will automatically be placed in full recovery at a rate of 100% of the Social Security payment,”The agency is required by law to claw back overpaid benefits.

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