Kaiser Health News reports that Republicans in Congress are “outraged” by $20 billion in Social Security overpayments to vulnerable older adults. What no one has reported is the silence among Republicans in Congress about the hundreds of billion of dollars in overpayments over the last several years to insurers offering Medicare Advantage plans. Apparently, when the recipient of billions in overpayments is a big corporation that supports their campaigns, Republican policymakers can look the other way.
These members of Congress want the Social Security Administration to answer for the Social Security overpayments. But, they don’t seem to want the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to answer for the overpayments to insurance companies offering Medicare Advantage plans. Their silence suggests that they don’t seem to want the corporate health insurers to return the tens of billions of Medicare dollars they have received.
Unlike the health insurers who have billions of dollars in their coffers to return the billions they were overpaid, a lot of the people who received Social Security overpayments are poor and no longer have the money they were overpaid. They can’t repay it.
“The government’s got to fix this,” said Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio). He chairs a Senate panel that oversees Social Security. Senator Brown also has called for CMS to address the Medicare Advantage overpayments.
Republicans in Congress are calling for a Congressional hearing and a fix to the Social Security overpayments but have been silent about Medicare Advantage overpayments. For example, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, who is a member of the Committee on Aging, asked about how the Social Security overpayments grew to $20 billion and wants someone to be held accountable “for, you know, messing this up.” He has never spoken about Medicare Advantage overpayments. let alone called for a hearing about them or questioned CMS for making them.
Older adults are receiving overpayment notices from Social Security. They are losing sleep, unable to pay the money back. In one case, Social Security demanded a woman repay $5,575 in retirement benefits. It then stopped sending her checks in order to recoup the money. No one in Congress has suggested that CMS should withhold payments to Medicare Advantage plans to collect the tens of billions in overpayments CMS has not received back.
Some members of Congress are calling for Social Security to stop trying to collect the overpayments from their constituents. It was not their mistake. But, again, few in Congress and no Republicans are calling on CMS to collect back overpayments from corporate health insurers, stemming from their overcharges.
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