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Database Error Costs Social Security Victims $500M

Posted by timothy on from the drop-in-the-bucket dept.

Hugh Pickens writes "The Washington Posts reports that the Social Security Administration has agreed to pay more than $500 million in back benefits to more than 80,000 recipients whose benefits were unfairly denied after they were flagged by a federal computer program designed to catch serious criminals. At issue is a 1996 law, which contained language later nicknamed the 'fleeing felon' provision, that said fugitives were ineligible to receive federal benefits. As part of its enforcement, the administration began searching computer databases to weed out people who were collecting benefits and had outstanding warrants. The searches captured dozens of criminals, including some wanted for homicide, but they also ensnared countless elderly and disabled people accused of relatively minor offenses such as shoplifting or writing bad checks and in some cases, the victims simply shared a name and a birth date with an offender." (Read more, below.) "The lead plaintiff in the class-action suit, Rosa Martinez, 52, of Redwood City, Calif., was cut off from her $870 monthly disability benefit check in January 2008 because the system had flagged an outstanding drug warrant in 1980 for a different Rosa Martinez from Miami. Officials said it is difficult to estimate how many social security recipients might be affected by the agreement but said the number is fewer than 1 percent nationally. 'What's remarkable about this case is thesheer number of individuals who were unfairly denied benefits and the size of the financial settlement they will receive,' said David H. Fry of Munger, Tolles & Olson, one of the pro bono attorneys who represented victims."

4 of 299 comments (clear)

  1. Not a database error by abshack · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is human error. When will people learn not to make peoples' name the primary key... :/

    1. Re:Not a database error by chrb · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The problem was not the choice of primary key. The problem was the way in which the people in charge of the process failed to consider the possibility of false positives.

      more than 80,000 recipients whose benefits were unfairly denied... The searches captured dozens of criminals

      "dozens?" Let's be generous and say 50. 50 out of 80,000 is a 99.9% rate of false positives. Not good.

  2. Re:How on earth... by greed · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The thing about UNIVERSAL public health care is...

    It's actually not very important if you correctly identify who is getting health care.

    Your doctor needs to know who you are, and lab results need to be correctly tied to samples, and so on. But that's not a function of who's paying the bills.

    But for determining if the doctors and labs get paid? Not so much.

    Basically, all you really need to know is, "is this person a citizen or lawful immigrant?" and "is this procedure covered by the system?". It's not so important to know WHICH citizen or lawful immigrant. It's nice to get it right, but your medical history doesn't need to be part of your public health insurance ID, so it's not critical to treatment.

    Different keying problem.

    That being said... I'm amazed at how many people think there's some huge government conspiracy out to get them when they can't get simple stuff like this right. Sure, they can listen in on all cell phone calls... but they can't keep a list properly?

  3. By 'Social Security victims' do they mean... by DustoneGT · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the people who are forced to pay into the unsustainable scheme?