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The Social Security Administration (SSA) is capping clawbacks of benefit overpayments at 10% of benefits checks instead of 100% after being criticized for draconian repayment plans that left some beneficiaries destitute. Social Security Commissioner Martin O'Malley said in a statement that the agency would cease "the heavy-handed practice of intercepting 100% of an overpaid beneficiary's monthly Social Security benefit" if they failed to respond to a demand for repayment. Additionally, the Social Security Administration will extend repayment plans to 60 months, up from its limit of 36 months, giving recipients an additional two years to repay the money. The changes...

The state of Illinois improperly paid out billions of unemployment tax dollars during the COVID-19 pandemic, with tens of millions going to people who were either dead or in prison, according to a newly released audit. The Illinois auditor general on Wednesday published a report that showed how the state agency that distributes unemployment benefits issued “overpayments” to the tune of $5.2 billion in fraudulent or excessive claims from fiscal year 2020 to fiscal year 2022. The report is the fullest accounting yet of the large-scale fraud and overpayments that occurred in Illinois during the pandemic. Of the $5.2 billion,...

The state made about $2.1 billion in unemployment insurance overpayments during the coronavirus pandemic, according to Ohio’s human services agency. That figure includes overpayments that were the result of fraud or errors, Matt Damschroder, director of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, said Monday. […] … The overpayments came in both the traditional state unemployment insurance program and the federal Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program. The largest amount of nonfraud overpayments came in the federal aid program that covers self-employed individuals, at about $1.2 billion. The largest amount of overpayments due to fraud involved the same federal program, with...

The IRS overpaid nearly $3.5 billion in Obamacare tax credits last year that it cannot recoup because of constraints built into the program, frustrating Republicans who have failed to repeal the health care law but say that money could have been spent on programs for veterans or infrastructure. A Treasury watchdog said the government paid out roughly $24 billion in Obamacare subsidies in the heart of the 2017 tax-filing season, with $5.8 billion in overages. Of that, just $2.3 billion was clawed back, leaving $3.5 billion in outstanding excess payments. “The overpayments were that much?” said Rep. Phil Roe, Tennessee...

The Internal Revenue Service, which is responsible for collecting federal taxes and enforcing federal tax law, was unable to accurately deal with its own complex rules governing the payment of its own employees and ended up overpaying more than 600 IRS workers about $4,200,000, according to an audit report by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration. The IRS also underpaid more than 900 employees about $2,700,000, according to TIGTA’s estimate. The inspector general found that the IRS’s rules for how it determines the correct pay for one of its own employees when he or she is promoted to a...

The Social Security Administration (SSA) spends more money than it collects when trying to recover payments to individuals who received benefits for which they were not eligible. According to the Office of Inspector General (OIG), the SSA issued $128.3 million in “low-dollar” overpayments between 2008 and 2013, and then spent $323 million to collect them. The agency ultimately recovered only $109.4 million. “This resulted in SSA spending over $213.6 million more than it collected,” the OIG said, in an audit released Wednesday. […] The overpayments were distributed through the SSA’s Retirement and Survivors Insurance (RSI), Disability Insurance (DI), and Supplemental...

A government watchdog says Social Security overpaid disability beneficiaries by nearly $17 billion over the past decade. Many payments went to people who earned too much money to qualify for benefits, or to people who weren’t disabled anymore. Some payments went to people who had died or to prison inmates. …

There is a lot of detailed information that is not real useful to the layperson, except this - Medicare (the National health program for Seniors, not to be confused with Medicaid, the health program for the poor and disabled), made net overpayments of $19.9 Billion (yes, with a "B") in fiscal year 2004. That is roughly $66.33 per US citizen (300M) or $118.45 per taxpayer (rougly 168M taxpayers in 2003, per irs.gov).

Report says state paid insurance company $20 million too much By Laylan Copelin AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF Friday, July 9, 2004 The state auditor on Thursday criticized the Health and Human Services Commission, saying it overpaid an insurance company $20 million for overseeing a program to insure poor children in rural Texas. That overpayment, according to the audit, allowed Clarendon Insurance Group, headquartered in New York, to make $5.5 million in excessive payments to a subcontractor that had no employees and provided no direct benefit to the children's insurance program. Four individuals received the bulk of those overpayments, according to the report....