US Rep. Ron Barber Working to Stop Improper Payments to Dead People

Press Release

U.S. Rep. Ron Barber is cosponsoring bipartisan legislation to save taxpayers billions of dollars by improving information flow to federal agencies to eliminate improper payments to dead people.

"It is absurd that because federal agencies are using an outdated system to track who has died, billions of dollars are wrongly paid to dead people," Barber said today. "I am working with Republicans and Democrats on common-sense legislation to improve data collection and data sharing so this wasteful practice comes to a stop."

Barber this week cosponsored H.R. 355 -- the Improper Payments Agency Cooperation Enhancement Act.

In the past:

$601 million in improper payments were made from 2006 to 2010 to federal retirees later found to have already died;
More than $1 billion in farm program payments were made to farmers who were dead for more than three years; and
Medicare prescription drug plans were paid approximately $3.6 million for drugs provided to 1,500 dead beneficiaries.
Improper payments are caused mostly by inadequate sharing among federal agencies of death data managed by the Social Security Administration. Social Security maintains the Death Master File, which contains the most complete information on who has died. However, most federal agencies rely on an incomplete version of the file.

The Improper Payments Agency Cooperation Enhancement Act would take several steps to improve the information available to federal agencies including:

Improving the Death Master File;
Requiring use of death data to curb improper payments;
Allowing federal agencies access to the complete Death Master File database; and
Ensuring that federal agencies managing retirement programs share best practices.
The problem with payments to dead people recently was highlighted in an article in The Washington Post.

The paper said the task of tracking deaths is an enormous one because about 2.5 million Americans die each year. While the vast majority of those deaths are handled correctly, glitches in the system have paid more than $700 million to the dead, according to government audits performed since 2008.

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