Social Security Agency Makes ‘Significant Progress’ in Updating Death Records

The agency said that it’s trying to address a ‘longstanding oversight concern.’

A Social Security card sits alongside checks from the U.S. Treasury in Washington on Oct. 14, 2021. Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

The Social Security Administration (SSA) in an update said that it has made headway in determining data accuracy for individuals marked as eligible to receive payments but are likely deceased.

In an April 29 statement, the agency said it “has made significant progress in improving the accuracy of death data, addressing a longstanding oversight concern,” adding that it has improved on “established procedures to identify people who have a higher likelihood of being deceased due to their age or incomplete death reports.”

“Updating the records of individuals who are implausibly old to be living is an important anti-fraud measure,” the SSA said, adding that so far, “no instances have arisen to date where an implausibly old individual whose record SSA updated actually contacted the agency for reinstatement.”

The SSA did not provide more details, including how many individual accounts may have been updated. The Epoch Times contacted the SSA for additional comment Friday.

The statement comes after the Elon Musk-led Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) said that some 11 million Social Security records have been updated, involving people aged 120 or older.

In response to claims that millions of people who are implausibly old are eligible to get payments, the SSA said in a March statement that the “millions of death reports received each year, less than one-third of 1 percent are erroneously reported deaths that need to be corrected,” noting that it receives death reports from a number of sources, including family members of the deceased, states, funeral homes, financial institutions, and others.

SSA also said that it has paid more than $14.8 billion in what it called “retroactive payments” to over 2.2 million people so far this year and separately identified more than $1 billion in cuts for the fiscal year 2025.

It comes as President Donald Trump said this week that Social Security and Medicaid will not be touched in a Republican budget bill that is making its way through Congress.

During an event on Tuesday night with NewsNation, Trump said that “we’re not doing anything with entitlements,” referring to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security payments.

“If you look at Social Security–and by the way–I think I’m better to say this than anybody, because I did nothing with entitlements that would hurt people for four years,” he said. “I could have done that. If I was going to do that, I would have done it, five years ago, six years ago or seven years ago. I’m not doing anything.”

Trump said that he will still look into some public entitlements, such as Medicaid, to ensure there is no fraud, waste, and abuse.

“There are a lot of illegal aliens that are getting Medicaid that shouldn’t be getting it. And nobody objects to taking people off Medicaid that aren’t allowed to be there. But we are doing absolutely nothing to hurt Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security. Nothing at all,” he said.

Since taking office in January, Trump has made a priority of targeting what his administration calls fraud, waste, and abuse, creating DOGE to reduce federal spending amid record national debt.

Some of the administration’s efforts, including terminating thousands of federal workers and dismantling agencies, have been met with numerous court challenges.

On Friday, the Trump administration unveiled its proposed budget, which calls for more than $160 billion in spending cuts. The proposal did not touch the Social Security Administration (SSA). Meanwhile, it did not include any reference to the Social Security Trust Fund, which is used to send out monthly payments to tens of millions of retirees and people on disability.