Dead People Still Getting Government Benefits? Color Me Shocked
Dead People Still Getting Government Benefits? Color Me Shocked.
Here’s a fun little number for you: 58,000 Social Security numbers tied to dead folks collected premium tax credits in 2023. That’s right, people who’ve already shuffled off this mortal coil are still on Uncle Sam’s Christmas list.
To put that in perspective, that’s more people than live in Bozeman, Montana or Dubuque, Iowa. We’re talking the entire populations of places like Kokomo, Indiana or Great Falls, Montana. Imagine every single resident of cities like Galveston, Texas or Joplin, Missouri, all getting checks addressed to ghosts.
Now let’s bring this home. Based on average Social Security payments, those 58,000 deceased recipients are pulling down somewhere around 1.3 billion dollars annually. That’s billion with a B.
Want to make it personal? There are roughly 3,500 homes in Stone Creek. If we took that ghost money and divided it among your neighbors, every single household would receive about $370,000. That’s not pocket change. That’s paying off mortgages. That’s funding children’s retirements. That’s a few years of comfortable living for most of us.
The D.C. bureaucrats will tell you that’s only .42% of recipients. Rounding error, they’ll shrug. But a small percentage of massive fraud is still fraud.
The law says to verify everything. The exchanges and insurers said, Nah, we’re good. And the checks kept flowing to people who don’t exist.
Friends, when your government can’t figure out who’s breathing and who’s not, we’ve got problems bigger than spreadsheets. That’s not inefficiency, that’s institutional rot.
Here’s something to think about. What would you do with an extra $370,000 every single year for the rest of your life? How many cruises could you take? How many new upgrades would you do to your Stone Creek home? How much could you gift to your kids and grandkids? How many medical bills would disappear? How much sleep would you get knowing your future was that much more secure?
That money exists. It’s real. And it’s going to dead people instead of you.
Think about that next time someone tells you the system is working fine.
For more thinking and discussion like this make sure to attend the next monthly meeting of the Stone Creek republican Club.