Accuracy of the Social Security Administration’s Manual Billing Process to Collect Medicare Premiums
- Audit report number
- A-07-16-50135
- Management challenge
- Improve the Prevention, Detection, and Recovery of Improper Payments
- Full report
- /~assets/audits/full/a-07-16-50135.pdf
- Summary report
- /~assets/audits/summary/summary-50135.pdf
We issued this report to determine whether the Social Security Administration (SSA) correctly completed manual actions to bill for Medicare premiums owed by beneficiaries whose monthly Social Security benefit was less than the monthly Medicare premium.
When an individual entitled to Medicare Part B receives a monthly Social Security benefit, SSA deducts the monthly Medicare premium from the benefit. However, some individuals’ monthly Social Security benefit is lower than the monthly Medicare premium. SSA must bill these individuals for the remaining amount of the Medicare premium.
We obtained a list of all beneficiaries who had an alert indicating Social Security benefits were lower than the monthly Medicare premium for Calendar Year 2015. From the population of 68,941 beneficiaries, we randomly selected 250 for detailed analysis to determine whether SSA’s actions were correct.
