Social Security reminds workers about ‘resurrecting’ people wrongly declared dead

Spurred by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the Social Security Administration is combing through its databases to check whether beneficiaries are alive or dead. It has already added dates of death to millions of people’s records, focusing on those who are implausibly old.

Spurred by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, the Social Security Administration is combing through its databases to check whether beneficiaries are alive or dead. It has already added dates of death to millions of people’s records, focusing on those who are implausibly old. The problem: Some people who have recently been declared dead are actually alive, forcing them to go to Social Security offices to be “resurrected” and stop the financial havoc that such a mistake can have on their lives. What’s more, the effort has prompted the agency to take what several workers described as an unusual step of reminding some employees about what to do if they encounter a not-really-dead person. Some managers received an email to remind their staff that “death correction cases” should be addressed that same day and don’t need to have appointments, unlike most people who need help. The agency also sent an email about dates of death being posted to 3.5 million records, with guidance on whom to report erroneous death listings. While Social Security has mistakenly declared people dead in the past, it’s typically a pretty rare occurrence. Of the more than 3 million deaths reported to the agency annually, less than one-third of 1% are erroneous and need to be corrected, Social Security said in a news release in March. The number of erroneous deaths reported so far this year is about the same as comparable time periods for the prior two years, an agency spokesperson told CNN. Cleaning up Social Security’s death records in an effort to thwart fraud is a focus of the DOGE representatives embedded at the agency. Musk and President Donald Trump have implied without evidence that the agency is paying benefits to millions of implausibly old people.