U.S. Government Sees Dead People, Cuts Them Stimulus Checks
Whippersnappers who are still young enough to work get a tax credit, but 52 million Social Security recipients will get $250 stimulus checks in the mail or direct deposited. Yay! Except for how as many as 10,000 dead people are receiving checks.
One U.S. citizen who died in Italy 34 years ago received a check. His family was a bit confused.
Antoniette Santopadre of Valley Stream was expecting a $250 stimulus check. But when her son finally opened it, they saw that the check was made out to her father, Romolo Romonini, who died in Italy 34 years ago. He'd been a U.S. citizen when he left for Italy in 1933, but only returned to the United Stated for a seven-month visit in 1969.
That's just great. I realize that it's difficult to keep track of who's alive in a country of a few hundred of millions of people, but you'd think they'd notice after thirty-four years.
Dead People Get Stimulus Checks
(Photo: clairity)
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According to the website, you have to be currently receiving Social Security in order to qualify for the stimulus check...
I'd be very worried about identity theft at this moment.
@TerribleDecade: yep most likely all of these people are victims of identity theft.
And thus why we REALLY need to overhaul how we handle personal records in this country.
@verucalise: Oh, lemme rephrase. You had to qualify for it from November 2008-February 2009. This is also for SSI recipients, children- not just the elderly.
Im alive and I still havent gotten mine!
Any news if any of the people who are still using the Woolworth Wallet Social Security Number got checks?
Are the dead people still on the voting lists as well?
Great! Let's put these folks in charge of health care and manufacturing! What could possibly go wrong? Just look at how smooth the government-mandated HDTV transition went - er, I mean - is going.
@Steve Jones: Grrr... won't derail thread... won't derail thread...
You're absolutely right. It would be a terrible tragedy if dead people were still receiving medical benefits. Almost as tragic as people paying premiums to PRIVATE health care companies for years and then being denied the medical care they need when they get sick. Or as tragic as people losing their jobs and their health care benefits at the same time. Or as tragic as having a privately run system that has caused the United States to perpetually pay more and get significantly less.
@Steve Jones: I'm with you. The government should take a lesson from my HMO, they never run a deficit. They even unauthorized a surgery after the fact so they could continue to profit off of me.
In fact we should privatize social security.Everyone's money could go into the stock market.
Honestly, this should read "Only 10,000 stimulus checks sent in error!". That's an astoundingly good error ratio.
@Steve Jones: If you're going to complain about something, at least complain about the right program. It isn't an HDTV transition, it was a digital TV transition. But yeah, once you add politics to it, generally screws the pooch.
@Steve Jones: Huh? The only issues i've seen are idiot consumers who can't grasp the idea of a converter box, and idiot politicians who think pushing back the date is prudent because of the idiot consumers I just mentioned (when really it would just confuse the issue more).
@Veeber: Oops. You're right - looking at HDTVs on line this morning. Should have said "smoothly" too.
@WiglyWorm: "Idiot politicians" are exactly my point. Everything Washington does sounds good. Then when you look into the actual execution - not so much.
Bureaucrats are even less accountable than corporations and less incentivized to do well. They can't be sued either.
When somebody shows me a well-run government program on the scale of national health care or GM that actually delivers on its promises, I'll change my tune.
@Steve Jones: Government is only untrustworthy and incompetent when the other guy's party is in charge.
@HiPwr: Eh - I think that used to be the case, a decade or so ago, but these days it seems it doesn't really seem to matter who's in charge. They're all corrupt, and they're all imcompetent. And the bigger problem is that these days the stakes are so much higher. There's a big difference between providing crappy postal service or a frustrating DMV experience, and screwing up the health care system or a trillion dollar+ budget.
@WiglyWorm: Methinks that's kind of a bad sign, when sending out 10,000 or so checks to dead people counts as "astoundingly good." Do you think stockholders in a company would accept something like this? Why should we demand any less of our government?
And I understand your point, that on this scale, the number of errors is relatively low, percentage-wise, but perhaps that means that it's much too large of a scale.
10,000 out of 52,000,000. That mean's they're 99.98% correct for crying out loud. Considering that the CIA Factbook says 6744 people die in the U.S. EVERY DAY, I almost find that success rate to be too good since more people will die between when they drop it in the mail and when they get it.
@WiglyWorm: Seriously. That's .02 percent, by my rough calculations. Meaning 1/200th of a percent. To be fair, the actual error rate would have to include other kinds of errors as well, so it's doubtless considerably higher, but still, the day my error rate is .02 percent, I'm happy.
Maybe the Democrats are just mailing checks to people who voted for them. Every election dead people overwhelmingly support the Democrats.
@floraposte: Especially since some of those will have just died and not really be something they could have fixed before the checks went out. The cost to get to 0 errors would be too high to be worth it.
so this only applies to people recieving Social Security? are currently employed people going to recieve another stimulus check or are we only get the tax break/credit they take out of our paychecks?
@PunditGuy: I wonder how many corpses crawl into offices demanding to use their benefits? ;)
Well, necrosis and gangrene aside, Mr. Santopadre, for which you are fully covered, I will have to give you a referral to the podiatrist for that ingrown toenail, and there will be a $25 copay.
Many large corporations have a clearing account for misc billings and things of the sort, including the one I work for. I cant even imagine how many times I have gotten the email "take this to bad debt". If you have millions upon millions of transactions some are bound to slip through, so no, I dont expect less of our government.
@TomCoughlin: You're right on all counts. The entire system is corrupt and the dangers are much greater.
@WiglyWorm: This does help put it into perspective, thanks for the numbers. The real irony is the contrast between this post and the one previous it lambasting government incompetence.
@xay: It's hard to see what impact the VFC program itself has had. Whatever it is, it has to be less than 1 percent of what a national health care system would be. How about we look at the health care system that is run by the feds - the VA? The range from good care to abysmal is simply not acceptable. Imagine how much worse it would be if an entire system for 250 million people were run that way.
@Thorny: Exactly. It's a matter of scale.
Even that one case really isn't that ridiculous. I mean, he died in another country, so it's possible there was a breakdown in communication. And since he moved to another country, they probably weren't expecting much from him in the way of taxes, so not it wouldn't be that suspicious not getting anything from him.
"I paid dead people!"
@Steve Jones: You're going to find an excuse to dismiss any government program mentioned, so there's not much point to playing your game. The rest of us have noticed that, by and large, people don't starve to death in this country, which is mostly due to government intervention. The elderly aren't living in abject poverty, which is mostly due to government intervention. You can drive from NY to CA, which is mostly due to government intervention.
The government got humanity to the moon. The government paid for the creation of many of the drugs you use, and made sure that others were safe. The government ensured that I can be served at a lunch counter in southern states. The government trained, equipped, fed and deployed the millions of men it took to liberate Europe in WWII.
So forget all that. I've got a question for you. Can you show me where private industry has created a well-run, efficient, successful health care program?
There will be no cost of living increase for Social Security recipients for at least the next 3 years. The two "stimulus" payments that recipients received will be much less than the usual 3% annual benefit increase. So while appearing to pander to retirees, the government is actually reducing their standard of living, while wasting money on administering the extra payments. I can never understand such political artistry, which while theoretically elegant, can't but fail in practice, serving only to demonstrate politicians contempt for their constituents.
@PunditGuy: Our health care system is awful. That's why Canadians and Italian Prime Ministers come here for their medical treatments. They're suicidal.
@catastrophegirl - manic first time home buyer: [sorry for the blank one - not sure what happened]
usually they seem to use wheelchairs:
[www.msnbc.msn.com]
@Tiber: After thinking about even more, what if the U.S. hired someone to get this check mailer 100% correct? I am sure that would have cost way more than the 10,000 checks they sent out in error. Could you imagine the cost to validate 52,000,000 people? Hah.
Well, I know 10,000 out of 52 million isn't that bad a ratio, but there shouldn't be any stimulus checks sent out.
@sir_pantsalot: I don't know. Some of those dead guys did things a lot better than those living alive today...
I wonder what if the dead people's numbers are still being used in theft... That could explain it. Too many highlanders around.