SACRAMENTO, the United States, May 7 (Xinhua) -- The social security system of the United States, long troubled by delays and system errors, are feared to face widespread chaos, leaving millions at risk of losing the benefits they depend on, according to various reports.
In recent weeks, the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) has been "plagued by problems related to technology, system errors, and even the marking of living people as dead," KFF Health News reported on Monday.
Holders of millions of social security numbers in the country had been marked as deceased, and these erroneous deaths came after a pair of initiatives from new leadership at the SSA to alter or update its databases of the living and the dead, according to the report of KFF Health News, a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation that focuses on coverage of health care policy and politics.
After interviewing more than a dozen beneficiaries, advocates, lawyers, current and former employees and lawmakers, the organization discovered that the SSA's overhaul is "making the agency worse at its primary job: sending checks to seniors, orphans, widows, and those with disabilities."
In Schenectady, New York, for instance, the report said, the SSA staff had seen a surge of living people wrongly marked as dead in the agency's records. Rennie Glasgow, a 15-year SSA veteran, told KFF that four "dead" people had come in his office in the past few weeks and they had to "resurrect" them.
Though it happened sporadically before, Glasgow said, there had been an uptick in such cases lately across upstate New York.
These errors are not just bureaucratic nuisances -- they freeze bank accounts, cancel insurance, and cut off access to work and essential services, said lawyers and advocates.
Since this year, it's been no longer straightforward for the agency to process changes -- people had to face long phone holds, lost paperwork, or in-person visits ending with no answers, according to James Ratchford, a lawyer in West Virginia with 17 years' experience representing social security beneficiaries.
Another lawyer called the situation "unconditional chaos" in the KFF report but requested anonymity due to the law firm's policy.
Researchers and lawyers suggested that the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk, was behind the problems at social security.
In January, U.S. President Donald Trump's administration and the DOGE launched a sweeping campaign to cut costs and modernize the agency.
DOGE's reforms proposed slashing 7,000 jobs, over 12 percent of the SSA's workforce, and closing 60 percent of its regional offices. The agency also shuttered its Office of Civil Rights and Equal Opportunity, which handled reasonable accommodation requests and civil rights complaints, moving those responsibilities to other divisions.
In fact, long before the DOGE's overhaul sent shockwaves through the social security system, Americans had already been struggling with mounting delays, staff shortages, and critical errors.
"As the workloads go up, the demoralization becomes deeper, and people burn out and leave," former SSA Commissioner Martin O'Malley testified in a U.S. House of Representatives hearing on April 1. He predicted that more than 3,000 additional employees would leave the agency. "It's going to mean that if you go to a field office, you're going to see a heck of a lot more empty, closed windows," O'Malley said.
Staffing levels hit a 25-year low by the end of 2022, straining the agency's ability to serve more than 73 million Americans, according to the Revolving Door Project, a private government watchdog and advocacy group.
Even before the latest wave of cuts and reforms, people seeking disability benefits faced months or even years of waiting. In April, more than 1 million initial disability claims were pending -- nearly double the number in 2019, according to The Arc, an advocacy group for people with disabilities.
The average wait time for a first decision was 232 days, or nearly eight months, and appeals could stretch the process to more than two years. In 2023 alone, 30,000 people died while waiting for a decision on their benefits.
With fewer staff and shuttered offices, wait times are soaring and critical errors are multiplying. The result is financial hardship, homelessness, and worsening health for people who can't access the benefits they need, warned The Arc.
"We are concerned that these longer wait times mean more disability applicants will die before they can get the Social Security benefits they need and deserve," The Arc said. ■
