this post was submitted on 03 Mar 2025
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Social Security payments could suffer interruption soon as DOGE causes ‘system collapse' (fortune.com)
submitted 2 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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Former Social Security Commissioner Martin O’Malley, who headed the agency during the Biden administration, urged people to start saving money now because benefits could be interrupted in the next one to three months. He told CNBC that changes DOGE is making to the agency have already caused IT system outages, which he predicted will become more frequent until there is a “system collapse.”

The federal government has never failed to deliver Social Security payments on time, but a former commissioner warned that could happen soon as Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency makes changes and cuts staff.

Martin O’Malley, who led the agency during the Biden administration, told CNBC on Saturday that cuts have already led to IT outages, which he predicted will become more frequent and last longer each time until there’s a total failure.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 weeks ago (2 children)

Please, oh please, fail to deposit my parents' social security payment. I want to see the look on my dad's face when he complains about it and then I ask him "so, is America great again yet?"

[–] [email protected] 15 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

I think ultimately the plan is like this:

  1. Fire most front line workers at field offices.
  2. Replace human workers with chat bots. If the chat bot can't fix your issue, getting a hold of a human will require a multi-hour hold on the phone.
  3. Announce a new 'fraud screening' tool, also built on buggy AI.
  4. The shit AI will miraculously find tens of millions of 'fraudulent' social security beneficiaries.
  5. Anyone wrongly thrown off the social security rolls will in theory be able to appeal and correct the error, but with no field offices, this will be nearly impossible to do so. Think 24 hold times.
  6. Millions of people wrongly thrown off social security for 'fraud' will simply not bother going through the process. If most do, another round of bogus AI screenings can just kick them off again, requiring them to go through the appeal process all over again.

Essentially, imagine the worst practices of the health insurance industry. Imagine all the bullshit hurdles they deliberately put in place to prevent people from getting the care they are legally entitled to. In theory any wrong denial of care can be appealed. In practice, insurance companies simply wear people down. The Social Security office will be redesigned to work the same way. The most determined of individuals may still get their benefits here and there, but millions will be stripped of their benefits permanently after they fail to navigate the labyrinth.

[–] Revan343 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

eFfIcIeNcY

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 weeks ago

I used to work for a health insurance company in the appeals dept. I would find obvious payment errors and route the appeal off to another dept. for correction; and it would just sit there. Eventually, my boss started putting pressure on me to close out the appeal even though the error hadn't been fixed because the open appeals were making our numbers look bad. I didn't do this, so one day I was just reassigned. The appeals processing assignment was handed off to one of my coworkers who had no problem just closing them out whether they had been resolved or not.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 weeks ago

Unfortunately this is what it will take for many.