You used to hear about crazy mistakes like when a credit card company offers a card to parakeet or when someone who died continues to receive social security checks. But $1 billion to dead people? That's what the office of Senator Tom Coburn, a republican from Oklahoma is claiming.
We know that zombies are becoming popular with the new television series The Walking Dead, but what was the government thinking? Or not thinking. Could someone have misunderstood the concept of stimulus?
Whatever the reason, Coburn's office says about $1 billion in taxpayer money has gone to a quarter of a million deceased individuals. Citing a report by the Government Accountability Office, he says the Department of Agriculture has sent $1.1 billion in subsidies to dead farmers.
It doesn't stop there. They also say the Social Security Administration sent $18 million in stimulus funds to 71,688 dead people and $40.3 million in questionable benefit payments to 1,760 deceased individuals. Wait. There's more. The Department of Health and Human Services sent 11,000 dead people $3.9 million in assistance to pay heating and cooling costs.
Want more? How about the Department of Housing and Urban Development which oversees local agencies. Reportedly, it knowingly distributed $15.2 million in housing subsidies to 3,995 households with at least one deceased person.
Medicaid has often been abused. Well the senator's office says it paid over $700,000 in claims for prescriptions for controlled substances written for over 1,800 deceased patients and prescriptions for controlled substances written by 1,200 deceased doctors. Medicare also reportedly paid as much as $92 million in claims for medical supplies prescribed by dead doctors and $8.2 million for medical supplies prescribed for dead patients.
IMaybe you really can take it with you?
