The Social Safety Administration (SSA) mentioned it’s reinstating a plan to get better 100% of overpayments to beneficiaries, a coverage the company deserted final yr after an outcry over instances wherein the observe led some People to obtain shock payments amounting to 1000’s of {dollars}.  

In a press release, SSA mentioned late Friday that it’s going to enhance the default overpayment withholding price for Social Safety recipients to 100% of an individual’s month-to-month profit, the identical degree that it had in place earlier than final yr’s reform. The company is required by legislation to claw again overpaid advantages.

Due to public backlash over the 100% restoration coverage, the company final yr had capped the withholding price for somebody who had been overpaid at 10% of the particular person’s month-to-month profit. On Friday, the SSA mentioned it’s going to begin claiming 100% of profit checks to cowl new instances of overpayments, whereas the withholding price for individuals with overpayments earlier than March 27 will stay at 10%, as will the speed for overpayments for Supplemental Safety Revenue, a program for low-income seniors and disabled People.

“People who find themselves overpaid after March 27 will robotically be positioned in full restoration at a price of 100% of the Social Safety fee,” the company mentioned.

The 100% clawback coverage had sparked an outcry after cases wherein beneficiaries had been hit with shock payments that demanded reimbursement inside 30 days. In some instances, the payments had been for tens of 1000’s of {dollars}. If beneficiaries had been unable to instantly pay the invoice, the company might dock their complete month-to-month Social Safety fee, leaving some individuals financially destitute, as reported by “60 Minutes,” KFF Well being Information and different media retailers,

In lots of instances, the overpayments had been the fault of SSA. A 2022 report by the company’s inspector common discovered that about 73,000 overpayments that yr had been attributable to a scarcity of “efficient controls over benefit-computation accuracy.”

Within the company’s new assertion, SSA Appearing Commissioner Lee Dudek mentioned it’s the company’s “responsibility to revise the overpayment reimbursement coverage again to full withholding.”

He added, “We now have the numerous duty to be good stewards of the belief funds for the American individuals.”

Elevating the clawback price to 100% from its present 10% will enhance the quantity of recovered funds by $7 billion over the following decade, the company mentioned. SSA pays out about $1.6 trillion in advantages every year. 

The revised coverage will result in monetary hardships for many individuals confronted with Social Safety overpayments, in line with the Nationwide Committee to Shield Social Safety & Medicare. “This motion, ostensibly taken to chop prices at SSA, needlessly punishes beneficiaries who obtain overpayment notices — often by means of no fault of their very own,” a spokesperson for the advocacy group mentioned in a press release. “Many overpayments are the results of errors on SSA’s half.”