Catherine Burrows understands firsthand the frustration that dealting with the Social Security Administration can bring.

For a single person living on a fixed income, meeting their own basic needs can prove challenging. However, families with dependent children living on fixed incomes are often faced with the decision of which basic needs they should even attempt to meet. Should they choose life saving medication or paying the rent? Should they choose buying groceries or keeping the electricity on? Of course, they need the medication, but they also need food and shelter – and basic utilities. Even though Social Security Disability Insurgence (SSDI) benefits are something of a safety net for people who have become disabled and can no longer earn an income, they aren’t always sufficient to keep disabled households afloat during times of financial crisis.

Catherine Burrows of Orange County, Florida was faced with making some of these hard choices recently. Her son is 14 years old and suffers from a seizure disorder. His anti-seizure medication prescription costs $400, which was being paid for by Medicare until Burrows lost those benefits recently. Burrows had been working full time and her income put her over the income limit for her son to receive SSDI or Medicaid. Just as she received a notice from the Social Security Administration (SSA) alerting her that her son’s benefits had been denied, Burrows was diagnosed with lung cancer and had to quit her job. The SSA told Burrows that she had to go through the appeals process to get the benefits reinstated, but Burrows contacted her local media station because she said she cannot wait that long for assistance. If she paid the rent, she would have no money left for the medication. If she bought the medication, they would be facing eviction due to falling behind on the rent.

“It’s very frustrating. This is my child’s life,” Catherine Burrows told WFTV.

WFTV journalists contacted the SSA on Burrows’ behalf, but were also told she would have to go through the appeals process to get her son’s benefits reinstated. The journalists contacted the makers of her son’s anti-seizure medication and the manufacturers donated a 30 day supply of the medication to  Burrows’ son. The Florida Department of Children and Families is trying to get Burrows’ son’s medical coverage reinstated while the SSDI appeal goes through the SSA system.

“I’m just hoping, praying with the Lord, it will get better,” Burrows said of her situation.

video management, video solution, video streaming Claimant Received Social Security Benefits After Going Back To Work

From Action 9 News in Charlotte, North Carolina comes a story of Tommy Thompson, a disabled man who was billed by the Social Security Administration for overpayments that he received after taking a teaching job while on Social Security disability benefits.  At face value, it may sound like a legitimate case of the government simply trying to recoup money that was fraudulently obtained by someone claiming to be disabled but was secretly working on the side.  Not so.

The benefits recipient, it appears, had taken steps to notify the SSA that he had started working.  Later, when the payments continued, he again notified the feds, requesting that the checks be canceled.  So, by all appearances, it certainly seemed as though this claimant was acting in good faith, doing all that he reasonably could to obey the rules.

It is indeed confusing then, to learn than not only did the SSA not stop sending the payments, but instead sent a bill for the overpayments, as though it was all his fault.  Ultimately, the problem was sorted out and he didn’t have to pay the money.  The Social Security Administration admitted that since the overpayments were not his fault, then he didn’t have to pay back the money.

Lessons Learned And Other Questions

Looking into the facts of this story bring several things to mind. First, there is a long-held standard in insurance cases that, whenever a claimant receives money “in good faith” (meaning that the claimant did not take illegal, unethical, or improper steps to acquire the money) that the claimant is not responsible for repayment in the event that he or she receives more than the claimant would ordinarily be entitled to receive.  Since the Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) program is indeed a government sponsored insurance program, this legal theory should hold in all jurisdictions.

Next, it certainly makes one wonder at what level the administration’s process broke down, and who should be held responsible for this mistake.  While this particular case of overpayment was relatively small compared to other fiscal snafus that occur daily in government programs, this case still represents a clear mishandling of government funds at the cost of the taxpayers.  Additionally, after calculating the additional time, energy and money that the government used to fix the problem  it’s certain that the total amount of the taxpayers’ loss surely must have been significantly higher.

How often does this occur? How many Social Security Disability claimants are innocently overpaid, and then, after receiving notice of the overpayment, simply refund the money, believing that the government would never ask them to pay money that they don’t actually owe?  There is an old addage that states for every person who righteously complain, there are 10 others who go quietly by.  Businesses understand this concept, and I’m certain that our governmental administrators understand it as well.

Now there may be some who would argue that the right thing to do would have been to return the money, in spite of his legal right to keep it.  However, I disagree.  This claimant is clearly a model for others who depend on the government programs which we gladly support.  All his actions were in good faith, and he proved himself a good steward of public funds by doing his reasonable best at ensuring that the taxpayers’ money wasn’t wasted.  Perhaps he knew that as long as he continued to receive the funds, he would eventually be allowed to keep it, yet to his credit, he kept up the pressure until the error was fixed.  Surely, the $700 that he received is a paltry comparison to the potential thousands of dollars that would have been charged for an external auditor to discover the error at a later date.   We should all be as civic minded, dilligent, and responsible as he.