Medicare Mix Up a Mess for Seniors

Imagine that you are a senior receiving Medicare and Social Security benefits every month.  You rely on these benefits.  These benefits help you with your basic needs and your medical issues.  Barely.

You are notified that you will be receiving a refund from Medicare to offset your payments for your prescription drug premiums.  The notification – if you received it – says that you will receive the money by a certain date.  Some people receiving this payment did not receive a notification but were scheduled to receive the money anyway.

Medicare and Social Security payments are made via direct deposit as much of the time as possible in an effort to avoid fraud, stolen checks and the like.  As a result, you get your bank statement and find the extra $350+ payment has been deposited into your bank account.

Just in case, you call Medicare to be certain that there are no problems, no mistakes and the money is yours to use.  You are told that the money is yours and you should go ahead and use it.  You also call the local Social Security and Medicare office to double check because this extra money worries you a little bit.  They tell you that the money is yours, there was no mistake.  Go ahead and spend it on whatever you want or need to.

Finally, after mulling it over with a lot of hesitation, you go ahead and spend the money on some necessities and a couple of other small items that you have put off purchasing for quite a while.  So far, so good. 

Then the confusion starts.  You didn’t know it – and neither did all of the people you spoke to in order to confirm everything before you spent the money – but there has been a computer error in your state.  The money was actually not supposed to be refunded to you.  As if this was not bad enough, the money is going to be taken back from you, and this will happen by deducting it from your very next Social Security check.  The state tells you that you can request a waiver so that the funds are not collected from your Social Security check, however, the waiver won’t be processed until after the checks are processed, so it is possible that the money will still be taken back out of the next check you are receiving.

This is a true story and it has taken place in Nebraska during the past few weeks and put many seniors into financial hardship.  The state is currently working on the problem with the 9,500 recipients involved.

If you have any problems with Medicare or Social Security payments, contact  Social Security at 1-800-772-1213.