Dealing with mistakes in Social Security is hard. The Administration is very big and it serves 70 million Americans across all the programs that they are in charge of, which makes it easy for things to fall through the cracks until an audit shows the mistake, which is usually an overpayment to beneficiaries. This is exactly what happened to a now widow in Ohio, who is not dealing with nearly $70,000 in Social Security overpayments.
The story started around 15 years ago, when the husband of Ruth Podmanik, a now 65-year-old retiree from Sheffield Lake, a city located just outside Cleveland, was diagnosed with leukemia. Due to his diagnosis, he spent 5 months without working and applied for benefits in order to be able to survive during his treatment. Because of the seriousness of the situation, benefits were approved and the family was able to weather the storm.
But when his prognosis improved and he went back to work, the payments did not stop, even though according to Ruth they contacted the Administration repeatedly to ensure that they were not getting payments they did not deserve. “He called them constantly,” Ruth told News 5 Cleveland in an interview after the threats from the Social Security Administration. “[He] said ‘I’m back to work. Why am I getting this?’ They said because you have Leukemia.”
When her husband died from the disease in 2012, Ruth thought this chapter was behind her and proceeded to live her life until she decided to retire. Given her marriage and pension, she opted to claim her husband’s benefits, and after the Social Security Administration gave her the green light to do so, she was then informed that they had been overpaid and that she was now responsible for giving back to the Administration the $69,087.50 that had been improperly allocated.
This is a massive blow to anyone that has decided to retire somewhat early because they though their finances were in order, but especially to a widow now reliving the death of her late husband and the trauma that caused it. Ruth is now wondering what will become of her and what she will have to do to rectify the situation.
As she continued in the interview, “I feel scared,” she said. “Am I going to have to sell my house?” She then added: “It wasn’t my mistake. It wasn’t my husband’s mistake for the overpayment. It was their mistake.”
The Social Security Administration steps up overpayment recoveries
Regardless of who made the mistake, the Administration has made it clear over the years that it is the responsibility of beneficiaries to know exactly how much they are entitled to and to repay any overpayments. And despite repeated notifications to the Administration that were not acknowledged, this is no exception.
The problem is that nowadays with the involvement of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) the process has become even more painful and inhumane, especially considering that the overpayments are rarely the beneficiaries fault. Because of DOGE the Social Security Administration has announced that they are seeking “an increase in overpayment recoveries”, hoping to recoup around $7 billion over the next decade (there have not been enough overpayments to justify this number).
The Social Security Administration’s acting commissioner, Lee Dudek, a career bureaucrat who has supported Trump’s efforts to dismantle the organization, loftily announced that “We have the significant responsibility to be good stewards of the trust funds for the American people.” To that aim, he changed the recovery policy for overpayments from 10% of affected recipients’ monthly benefits until the debt is repaid to 100% of benefits, which would plunge thousands of Americans into poverty through no fault of their own.
Amidst increasing complaints, he then changed it to 50%, but that is still unaffordable for most, especially considering that a study by the National Council on Aging revealed that 45% of people aged 60 or above had an average monthly income “below what they needed to afford basic living needs” and that senior-citizens organization AARP found that 20% of over-50s in the U.S. have no retirement savings to fall back on should they stop receiving benefits.