Speaker 1: Hello, they're friends. That's Josh. And for this week's Select,
Speaker 1: I chose our episode that takes a frank and thrilling
Speaker 1: look at what happens when the government thinks you're dead.
Speaker 1: As you can imagine, nothing good is the answer to that.
Speaker 1: I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Stuff you should know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Hey, I'm welcome to
Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck, Bryan,
Speaker 1: there's Jerry over there. Jerry's not eating anything today. Chuk.
Speaker 1: There is clear And did you just do that as
Speaker 1: a coaster? Yes, I don't want to make a chinky
Speaker 1: sound every time, Like Okay, I thought I don't want that.
Speaker 1: I want this now, I get it. Did you hear that?
Speaker 1: You didn't hear anything? No, I'm I said everyone. Josh
Speaker 1: just folded up his notes and put his can of
Speaker 1: cola down on that. And I've never seen you do that,
Speaker 1: And I thought you were trying to preserve this cheap.
Speaker 1: This thing is tougher than they. Okay, so it was
Speaker 1: a sound thing. Sure, it's a sound dampening technique. Can
Speaker 1: look at us after all these years. I came up
Speaker 1: with that up in our game um, so, Chuck, do
Speaker 1: you remember we did a social Security number episode? Did we?
Speaker 1: I thought, so, you don't remember that one. It was
Speaker 1: one of those ones where you're like, my eyes are
Speaker 1: going to bleed because this is so boring, but it
Speaker 1: turned out to be pretty interesting. It was one of
Speaker 1: those remember that. But we should give a little bit
Speaker 1: of a refresher on social Security numbers. Okay, yeah, here's mine.
Speaker 1: Oh you're gonna give your your to eight seven, nine four. No,
Speaker 1: I don't even because what if I just accidentally said
Speaker 1: someone else's like made one up? Yeah, and some dudes listening,
Speaker 1: it's like, dude, how'd you know Todd? It's always Todd?
Speaker 1: I don't know. So, so security numbers, get this everybody.
Speaker 1: They first started being issued in November of nine six,
Speaker 1: and the Social Security Administration was created to administer a
Speaker 1: new deal program of federal benefits, things like welfare or
Speaker 1: retirement benefits, medicare UM. The entire reason any of us
Speaker 1: originally were given a Social Security number was to track
Speaker 1: our lifetime earnings and to um determine how much we'd
Speaker 1: put into Social Security so that when we retired, they
Speaker 1: could determine how much we should get out in retirement.
Speaker 1: That's why everyone has a SOFAL security number. And because
Speaker 1: there are nine digits um, there's something like a billion
Speaker 1: different possible combinations. And we're about halfway towards using up
Speaker 1: the SOB security numbers, but probably gaining fast. We are
Speaker 1: starting to gain much faster than we were before, a
Speaker 1: good point, but we still got plenty of time. But
Speaker 1: because of this um, social security numbers get tired when
Speaker 1: you die, which we'll get to. But originally, when when
Speaker 1: you were given social Security number, that was it. It
Speaker 1: wasn't meant for anything else but to track your earnings
Speaker 1: in to figure out your retirement. Right. Yeah, not like
Speaker 1: when you get to go to get a haircut basically
Speaker 1: and they ask you for your Social Security number. And
Speaker 1: the seventies, the federal government said, okay, there's a couple
Speaker 1: of other things that you should really have your SOLI
Speaker 1: Security number. For a passport, UM makes sense if you
Speaker 1: go to open a bank account that was a new
Speaker 1: one too, I'll buy that UM. But then, like you said,
Speaker 1: like as computers came along, now everybody asked what it's
Speaker 1: become an identifier in a in an authenticator, and that
Speaker 1: is really bad. That is not what we should be
Speaker 1: doing with social Security numbers. It really not only that,
Speaker 1: but the phone numbers and everything and addresses. It just
Speaker 1: annoys me. And I'm not like a conspiracy guy. It's
Speaker 1: not like I think, like, oh, what are they going
Speaker 1: to do with this? It just annoys me. Well, and
Speaker 1: I can't get a haircut without provide. I'm like, I
Speaker 1: have cash in my and you have scissors. Can we
Speaker 1: just do this right? Can we do it like Floyd style?
Speaker 1: You know? But it annoys me. But even if you
Speaker 1: take away the annoyance, companies have proven time and time
Speaker 1: and time again that they're not to be trusted protecting
Speaker 1: your SO Security number because to authenticate you saying who
Speaker 1: you are who you say you are, they've got to
Speaker 1: have your SO Security number on file. And when somebody
Speaker 1: hacks into their databases, they get your SO Security number.
Speaker 1: All of your information is right there, and it's become
Speaker 1: a real problem. But it's also become a real problem
Speaker 1: living a modern life without giving out SO security number. Right.
Speaker 1: So we say all this to point out that if
Speaker 1: for some reason, you didn't have a Social Security number
Speaker 1: any longer, it would be tough to navigate life. And
Speaker 1: that actually happens to some people. Yeah, if you've seen
Speaker 1: the movie Brazil, Oh is it like this? You never
Speaker 1: saw Brazil. It's it's sort of this in a future
Speaker 1: dystopian world, but you know, basically like it's it's bureaucracy
Speaker 1: at its best of someone who's you know, dead or
Speaker 1: not dead, and the government mixes it up. Is that
Speaker 1: what Brazil is about? Yeah? I did not know that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm glad you brought that up thing because we would
Speaker 1: have heard from people. It's it's an Yeah, it's good, right,
Speaker 1: it is. And you should go listen to the movie
Speaker 1: Crush episode on Brazil with Jonathan Colton. Okay, yeah, I
Speaker 1: didn't know that. Why no one slipped past me. I
Speaker 1: wasn't talking to you, but sure, you're welcome to listen. Thanks,
Speaker 1: I'm part of everybody. I had to go to the
Speaker 1: Social Security Office recently to get a card because of
Speaker 1: this job in our new company. Really, yeah, I had
Speaker 1: to prove, you know whatever, that I'm alive. You didn't unemployable.
Speaker 1: I guess you didn't just give him your passport. I
Speaker 1: couldn't find my passport because I'm in between houses right
Speaker 1: now and it was buried somewhere. Okay, but you do
Speaker 1: have it, because we're probably going to Toronto this year.
Speaker 1: I do have it. I did find it kind of
Speaker 1: after I went to the Social Security office. But all
Speaker 1: that was just to say that if you think the
Speaker 1: d m V is a pit of despair, just go
Speaker 1: to the Social Security I want to It's not fun.
Speaker 1: I really don't want to know. So, um, okay, you
Speaker 1: can imagine how bad it is when everything's just hunky
Speaker 1: dory and you just need a copy of your card.
Speaker 1: That's all you needed. Right For some people, some poor
Speaker 1: SAPs out there, they are thought by the government and
Speaker 1: listed by the government as having died, and that is
Speaker 1: a big problem if you're alive. Yes, because again, you
Speaker 1: need your Social Security number for everything to start with.
Speaker 1: And then secondly, because we have enough social Security numbers
Speaker 1: to go around. Like I said, when you die, you're
Speaker 1: so security number gets retired with you and they hang
Speaker 1: in in the rafters of your local NBA franchise. It's
Speaker 1: exactly right. If you look really closely, they're all up there.
Speaker 1: But um, that's that is a problem for somebody who
Speaker 1: gets listed as dead on what's called the death Master file.
Speaker 1: Do I need to say it now? Even somebody listening
Speaker 1: to the very first stuff. You should know right now.
Speaker 1: They know what you're saying. There's a bunch of good
Speaker 1: band names in here. But Death Master File is pretty good.
Speaker 1: So uh. It's also called the Social Security Death Index,
Speaker 1: but death Master files way better. I think you would agree.
Speaker 1: It depends on who you're talking to. I think genealogists
Speaker 1: typically call it the s S d I. Everybody else
Speaker 1: calls it the death Master File. That's what I saw,
Speaker 1: you know why, because they don't know how to party
Speaker 1: or they get their own little weird party going on.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I didn't think about that. Um. Yeah, you
Speaker 1: gotta look at people differently sometimes. I was trying to
Speaker 1: think of the bumper sticker. Genealogists do it blank in
Speaker 1: the in the archives. Genealogists do it with their DNA,
Speaker 1: with their dead ancestors. It's two bumper stickers, just having
Speaker 1: ellipses had become of one. So uh, all right, where
Speaker 1: were we the d MF. Alright, it's it was established
Speaker 1: at the same time the Social Security numbers were back
Speaker 1: in nineteen thirty six, and then it took all the
Speaker 1: way to night before the public could even see this list,
Speaker 1: right right, there was a freedom of Information Act that
Speaker 1: was filed back in night um, and there was a
Speaker 1: lawsuit in the federal court said you know what, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is this is public information. You have to publish this.
Speaker 1: And there's actually like a master death master file that's
Speaker 1: called the New Newmandent and that's like everything, and that's
Speaker 1: the that's the one that the death master file is
Speaker 1: derived from. The public version of it is the death
Speaker 1: master file, right which, when you die, there a bunch
Speaker 1: of ways that your name can get to the s
Speaker 1: s A, the Social Security Administration. Sometimes it's a funeral home.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's from like a spittle. Sometimes it's from your family, um,
Speaker 1: because it's the family's responsibility ultimately to report it. But
Speaker 1: most of the time the funeral home is the one
Speaker 1: that actually does is like a service. I wouldn't have
Speaker 1: known that, but I also saw, um, well now you know, um,
Speaker 1: there's probably some poor stuff. You should know a listener,
Speaker 1: our condolences, who's dealing with this right now? It's your
Speaker 1: responsibility to go report this to the Social Security Administration. Yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: that's sad. I also saw that your bank, the postal service,
Speaker 1: some other randos are legally allowed to report your death
Speaker 1: as well, so as the post off post person to
Speaker 1: saying like, I haven't picked up their mail in like
Speaker 1: three weeks, they're dead. To me, I think I should
Speaker 1: just report that. I don't. I don't know I could.
Speaker 1: I could not find the procedure from that anything other
Speaker 1: than a couple of good sources mentioned the postal service
Speaker 1: as a legal place, the legal entity that can report
Speaker 1: your death to the FEDS. Right, So why do they
Speaker 1: want this death Master File? Of course, if you have
Speaker 1: paid UM, well, the government needs to know if you're
Speaker 1: not around anymore. It's kind of that simple. There's a
Speaker 1: couple of reasons why. Yes, they need to know, because
Speaker 1: you get a little dough They can't have your Soubsecurity
Speaker 1: number out there. They need to know that you're deceased
Speaker 1: UM because they don't want to be paying um income
Speaker 1: tax refunds if somebody starts filing them fraudulently. They don't
Speaker 1: want people opening bank accounts in your name. They want
Speaker 1: to make sure that you're listed as dead. And so
Speaker 1: that's what the Death Master File does. It kind of
Speaker 1: serves as the storehouse for all the people in America
Speaker 1: who have been dead basically since the sixties. But it
Speaker 1: goes as far back as nineteen thirty six or thirty seven,
Speaker 1: which is surprisingly more than a hundred million people. Yes,
Speaker 1: but they think that there's maybe up to sixteen million
Speaker 1: dead people missing from this list. It's not it's not perfect.
Speaker 1: We'll spoil now. I guess we should then follow that
Speaker 1: statement by saying there are tens of thousands of people
Speaker 1: on that list who should not be on that list,
Speaker 1: right exactly, But before we get to there, um, This
Speaker 1: Death Masterfile originally was so Social Security could track who
Speaker 1: was dead and who wasn't, so they could determine who
Speaker 1: to pay Social Security Administration benefits out to the survivors.
Speaker 1: Get this, did you know this? If you're in America
Speaker 1: and you're the recipient, you're the survivor of somebody who
Speaker 1: gets Social Security, you get a cool two hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty five dollars to help bury them. Yeah. That's when
Speaker 1: I said you get a little dough that I meant little,
Speaker 1: a little dough. Yeah, maybe like one of the fancy
Speaker 1: handles on the casket would be covered by that. I
Speaker 1: don't even think you can get cremated for two hundred dollars.
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't even think they'll leave you
Speaker 1: in a ditch out back for two hundred dollars. A
Speaker 1: sky burial costs more than that. Maybe that try state
Speaker 1: crematorium would take your two hundred fifty dollars. But that's it.
Speaker 1: Do you remember them? Oh? Sure, yeah evil? So uh,
Speaker 1: like you said, mistakes are made. And this is where
Speaker 1: it turns slightly Brazil, there was an investigation in two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven and they actually named grave Mistakes, which is
Speaker 1: hysterical by Scripps Howard News service. And what they did
Speaker 1: was they took uh this master death file from three
Speaker 1: different years two thousand eight, two thousand eleven. They created
Speaker 1: a computer program to basically just compare them to see
Speaker 1: what they came up with. And that they found, uh third,
Speaker 1: almost thirty two thousand living people who were listed as deceased,
Speaker 1: and ninety eight or two thousand eight that were then
Speaker 1: taken off that list after they realized that they goofed
Speaker 1: up in two thousand eleven. So these people had spent months, years,
Speaker 1: maybe um listed as dead. And here's the problem. It's
Speaker 1: bad enough if you go to apply for Medicare because
Speaker 1: you've retired or Social Security benefits and the government says
Speaker 1: denied UM you're dead and you're listed as dead, because
Speaker 1: as far as the government's concerned, if you're on this,
Speaker 1: you're dead. To them. That's bad enough. But remember that
Speaker 1: Freedom of Information Act Um lawsuit that opened the thing
Speaker 1: up to being published publicly. The reason why that suit
Speaker 1: was filed is because the business community said, hey, we
Speaker 1: can really use that thing there. It's basically it would
Speaker 1: be like a big do not take checks from these
Speaker 1: people list for all dead Americans. Because if somebody comes
Speaker 1: to us and wants to open a bank account, wants
Speaker 1: to get an insurance policy, wants to get a car,
Speaker 1: wants to get a job, it doesn't matter, wants to
Speaker 1: do something where they could take us for a ride,
Speaker 1: if they're a fraud, then if we had this list
Speaker 1: to check against, like social Security numbers or names or whatever,
Speaker 1: we could root out fraud and we could defend ourselves
Speaker 1: from identity theft and the fraud that's perpetrated by it.
Speaker 1: And so banks, insurance company, car dealerships, cable companies, employers, everybody,
Speaker 1: other government agencies, all barbers, they don't forget them. They
Speaker 1: all use this death Master file, which is available publicly
Speaker 1: to check your applications against. And if the government says
Speaker 1: that you're dead. It says that on this file, whether
Speaker 1: it's right or wrong, you're dead. And that's a whole
Speaker 1: lot of problems for you. We're gonna get into those
Speaker 1: right after this, and things chock chock stop. So before
Speaker 1: we broke, I was talking about that, uh, that scripts
Speaker 1: um investigation, and there was an Inspector General's report in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight that kind of pulled back the
Speaker 1: curtain on this stuff, and Social Security said, uh, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's about right. There's there's a lot of people tens
Speaker 1: of thousands that we think are dead and aren't dead,
Speaker 1: but they're they're success rates pretty good. Yeah, and he said,
Speaker 1: they said, but we're at a ninety nine point five
Speaker 1: nine rate of accuracy, which is not too bad for
Speaker 1: a government bureaucracy. That's really good. And they said that
Speaker 1: of the time, can you can fix it in just
Speaker 1: a year, just a hellish year. Yeah, not too bad. Um.
Speaker 1: And so they basically admitted two being a government. Uh.
Speaker 1: I don't want to knock them too much because it
Speaker 1: feels like everyone's always, you know, knocking government work. But
Speaker 1: they're basically saying like, yeah, man, it these names are miskeeeds.
Speaker 1: Or these numbers are miskeyed. Sometimes happens, so UM. The
Speaker 1: thing is that point for one percent error rate, that's
Speaker 1: tens of thousands of people every year. There's like two
Speaker 1: point seven million people added to this list every year
Speaker 1: who die in America, right, so it adds up to
Speaker 1: a lot of errors. The thing is that SoC Security
Speaker 1: Administration UM, so they take their Death Master file, they
Speaker 1: handed over to the National Technical Information Service, and they're
Speaker 1: the ones who distributed to all the insurance companies, the
Speaker 1: genealogy websites, I think ancestry dot com publishes it UM,
Speaker 1: the yeah insurance companies, everybody who wants to do a
Speaker 1: background check on you, they all get their their versions
Speaker 1: of this from them, the National Technical Information Service. But
Speaker 1: part of the agreement to get this from them you
Speaker 1: have to pay for it, is that you have to
Speaker 1: keep your DMF up to date because if you just
Speaker 1: buy one every once in a while UM and the
Speaker 1: Social Security Administration finds an error on and updates their file.
Speaker 1: If you don't go get the new file, your old
Speaker 1: file is still going to have that error. And that's
Speaker 1: when it becomes problematic for the people who are listed
Speaker 1: as deceased. When they try to go get credit and
Speaker 1: it kind of has a tendency to spread once it's
Speaker 1: out there. Yeah. So, like I said, sometimes it's being
Speaker 1: mis keyed. UM. One I think they said like one
Speaker 1: out of every two hundred is just from clerical error. Um.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it can be like, um, a family member goes
Speaker 1: to report to death and they accidentally make a mistake
Speaker 1: where they might end up being on the death list. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I don't know how that happens, but it does happen.
Speaker 1: There are people like Don Pilger human error, married du
Speaker 1: Bord who who apparently married du Board just gave up.
Speaker 1: She She's like, my husband can get credit cards still,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna live off of uh. Sometimes you this
Speaker 1: one woman named Candice Atkins just accidentally clicked deceased on
Speaker 1: a tax return on an electronic filing, and that was it.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine now, I can't believe there's not an undo.
Speaker 1: That's yeah, I was looking at me that she had submitted.
Speaker 1: I guess you could probably have undone it in the moment,
Speaker 1: but she didn't realize it and submitted it, right, But
Speaker 1: you should still be able to undo that. Um. And
Speaker 1: then there are some weird things these uh anomalies that
Speaker 1: you dug up. Um. More than false listings made in
Speaker 1: two thousand seven were from Illinois. Yep. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a hiccup in the system to me. I hiccup in
Speaker 1: the system or a super lazy data entry person you think. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: More than two million Americans were falsely listed as dying
Speaker 1: on the fifte and that was just an internal policy,
Speaker 1: is to use the fifte as a default value when
Speaker 1: they didn't know at the middle of the month. Sounds
Speaker 1: good to me. Um, I guess that was just the
Speaker 1: question of not going to the trouble of verifying the
Speaker 1: information right so um. And it can happen the other
Speaker 1: way too, you can be I think at least six
Speaker 1: million dead Americans are labeled as alive, which is a
Speaker 1: huge problem because you're you're just your information is out
Speaker 1: there ready to be abused by the nefarious. Well, no,
Speaker 1: that's the opposite. If you're If you're listed as deceased
Speaker 1: but you're still alive, your information is being published and
Speaker 1: can be used for identity fraud. If you're actually dead
Speaker 1: and not listed. If somebody knows that you're dead and
Speaker 1: not listed, they can use your stuff to to perpetrate
Speaker 1: fraud against the government. Yeah, that's what I was saying. Yeah,
Speaker 1: sixty seven thousand of those people, of those numbers were
Speaker 1: used to report three billion dollars in income between two
Speaker 1: thousand and six and two thousand eleven. That's a lot
Speaker 1: of text return refunds, so fraud. Yeah, So it's a
Speaker 1: problem both ways, where either you're dead and you're not
Speaker 1: listed on there, or you're not dead and they listed
Speaker 1: you anyway. And like I was saying earlier, this once
Speaker 1: this information gets out there, because there's so many different
Speaker 1: entities getting this list, once it's out there, it stays
Speaker 1: out there. It's very tough to go around to everyone
Speaker 1: and and get this information changed. Even once you get
Speaker 1: it changed with the Social Security Administration, because while it's
Speaker 1: a requirement to keep your your list up to date,
Speaker 1: if you're a subscriber, there's no enforcement to it. There's
Speaker 1: nobody who comes along and says, let me see your list.
Speaker 1: Oh it's not up to date. Give me give me
Speaker 1: ten dollars that you're fine. There's nobody enforcing it. So
Speaker 1: once it's out there, it's very tough to undo. It
Speaker 1: takes forever, uh well less than a year on average supposedly.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of horror stories, UM for
Speaker 1: what this can due to someone's life. UM. This one
Speaker 1: per Sin Rivers. What's the first name, Judy Rivers. Judy
Speaker 1: Rivers Rivers Cuomo. UM. Police actually detained Judy Rivers from
Speaker 1: using because she used a debit card, her own debit
Speaker 1: card at a Walmart at Walmart Plus. She also had
Speaker 1: a mountain dew bottle size meth lab in her pocket. Uh.
Speaker 1: But in like it seems like all of these cases.
Speaker 1: It ranges from stuff like, um, your insurance gets all
Speaker 1: messed up, or your maybe disability checks or your Medicaid payments,
Speaker 1: or you're trying to get a home loan or trying
Speaker 1: to get a credit card, like anything that you can
Speaker 1: think of where a social Security number might help. You
Speaker 1: can't get a haircut. You should see how long the
Speaker 1: hair is on these people. Even if you have cash,
Speaker 1: they won't do it. Rivers ended up living out of
Speaker 1: her car for six months. Yeah, she had just a
Speaker 1: really bad time of it for five years. UM. And
Speaker 1: at first she didn't know what was going on because
Speaker 1: she was frozen out of her bank accounts. Because this
Speaker 1: is something said like like you you can't get future loans,
Speaker 1: you can't get future insurance policies, you can't get future credit.
Speaker 1: But also the stuff that you already have, your current
Speaker 1: bank accounts, all that stuff gets frozen because you're listed
Speaker 1: is dead, and so that comes up on the computer
Speaker 1: and your account gets frozen. And even when you show
Speaker 1: up and say hey, it's me, you know me, the
Speaker 1: teller can't do anything about it. The bank can't do
Speaker 1: anything about it. It's it's done. And now you've just
Speaker 1: been pitted against the system. Yes, and it's like there's
Speaker 1: no door you can go knock on and say, hey,
Speaker 1: we can clear this up in just a few minutes.
Speaker 1: I'm clearly alive. You just click the few little things
Speaker 1: you need to click to get my life back. Because
Speaker 1: the c US government it's not nearly that easy. So
Speaker 1: I guess, said Chuck, that brings up what to do
Speaker 1: because there actually are procedures in place, Like we said,
Speaker 1: the Social Security Administration says this is not fully accurate.
Speaker 1: Anybody gets this list needs to keep updating it as
Speaker 1: we update it. I think they released an updated list weekly.
Speaker 1: They don't even tell you though, you find out the
Speaker 1: hard way almost always. That's a big one. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: not like they say, by the way, we found an error, UM,
Speaker 1: because they don't know. They don't know you're alive. Right,
Speaker 1: So I actually called the Social Security Administration. I did
Speaker 1: because I wanted answers. You didn't go to the office. No,
Speaker 1: I didn't know. It was a little laterward. It wasn't cowardless,
Speaker 1: it was laziness. So UM I was talking to like
Speaker 1: just the the guy who answered, and he knew exactly
Speaker 1: what I was talking about, knew all the procedures. But
Speaker 1: I asked him. I was like, do you guys ever
Speaker 1: uncover this yourselves or is it when people come to
Speaker 1: you that you know there's a mistake. He's like, yeah,
Speaker 1: when people come to us. So supposedly there's all these
Speaker 1: reforms in place and all that. But I think still
Speaker 1: for the most part, when an error is uncovered, it's
Speaker 1: because you found it out. But even if they do
Speaker 1: find it out, yes, what you said is true, they
Speaker 1: don't inform the person, which is kind of a violation
Speaker 1: of the UM the Privacy Act, I would think. So
Speaker 1: from what I understand, it is like anytime your confidential
Speaker 1: information is breached and made public, UM, you're supposed to
Speaker 1: be informed about that. So the SSA should be sending
Speaker 1: out letters, but as far as I know, they do not.
Speaker 1: I love this quote in here, um, under the section
Speaker 1: on what to do, Like the Social Security Administration is
Speaker 1: trying to correct this, and there's a quote from someone
Speaker 1: who works there that said that sometimes they'll go out
Speaker 1: and see if old Americans are really still alive, and
Speaker 1: it it says this, we go to medicare and see
Speaker 1: if anyone hasn't been to medicare for three years, and
Speaker 1: if they haven't been, we try to go out and
Speaker 1: make a phone call to call them and see if
Speaker 1: they're you know, still here. And the interviewer was like,
Speaker 1: are you drunk? That's what it sounds like. That is
Speaker 1: the follow up question. Oh man, So yeah, they I
Speaker 1: mean supposedly because of things like that. Scripts Howard News
Speaker 1: Service investigation in two eleven sixteen minutes did a big one,
Speaker 1: and I think, yeah, for sure, Um, yes, it is
Speaker 1: like the truth of what you just have ran through
Speaker 1: me like a bolt. Um. But the Social Security Administration
Speaker 1: has finally kind of started to be responsive and they
Speaker 1: are supposedly undertaking reforms, including having investigators try to root
Speaker 1: this out themselves, which ironically they're relying on other government
Speaker 1: databases like this guy said medicare to check their records against.
Speaker 1: They've stopped taking reports from the state and now only
Speaker 1: except um direct reports from people. But that in itself
Speaker 1: opened up another problem because they went back and cleared
Speaker 1: out the records of like five million Americans whose deaths
Speaker 1: have been reported from state databases, so that six million
Speaker 1: went to something like eleven million of dead people who
Speaker 1: aren't on there. Now, are they actually recommending that you
Speaker 1: pull your credit report three times a year? Yes? Really? Yes,
Speaker 1: that seems like I don't know, You're not like that
Speaker 1: affects your credit. I don't know if that one does. Really.
Speaker 1: I know it's free for sure, but I don't know
Speaker 1: if it affects your credit or not. But yeah, so
Speaker 1: you get access to your the credit reports from the
Speaker 1: three big bureaus, right, are you gonna do that? You
Speaker 1: have you set up calendar reminders? No, I'm going through
Speaker 1: now like once a quarter. I haven't the rest of
Speaker 1: your life to make sure you're not listed as dead.
Speaker 1: I haven't had time today yet. It seems like if
Speaker 1: you're an active consumer in the world, you would find
Speaker 1: out very quickly, very quickly. Um, without having to do that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that scripts service. Though, when they found the like thirty
Speaker 1: four thousand people who have been listed as dead, they
Speaker 1: tried to contact as many of them as they could,
Speaker 1: and they said about half of the people were well
Speaker 1: aware that they were listed as dead names through nightmare struggles,
Speaker 1: but strangely like half had no idea what they were
Speaker 1: talking about. So it's like, what kind of life do
Speaker 1: you have to live to not be aware of that?
Speaker 1: Because you you or I would come up against it
Speaker 1: within a week or a month or something. It seems like, yeah,
Speaker 1: like there would be something that came up where it's like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, but like it says this information isn't
Speaker 1: is incomplete, or it says you're dead or something like that.
Speaker 1: We find out pretty or just to go get money
Speaker 1: out of a cash machine, it might say sorry, your
Speaker 1: pen doesn't work. But I think the recommendation is in
Speaker 1: addition to finding out that your listed is dead, there's
Speaker 1: also a lot of other stuff that that you can
Speaker 1: kind of keep tabs on by looking at your credit
Speaker 1: report three times a year, once every four months. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and they say the real solution for all of us
Speaker 1: would be if every company on the planet doesn't require
Speaker 1: Well here's the thing though, they can't legally require your
Speaker 1: social Security number two open up or start a telephone
Speaker 1: in your name at a home, but they'll ask for it.
Speaker 1: And if you refuse to give it, like, you may
Speaker 1: not be able to get at all, or you may
Speaker 1: just have a really really hard time. Yeah, they can
Speaker 1: refuse to do busin with you. And that's the crux
Speaker 1: of the problem because that de facto means that you
Speaker 1: need to play ball whether you want to give your
Speaker 1: Social Security number out or not. Tough, if you want
Speaker 1: that internet service or that cable service, or you want
Speaker 1: that haircut, you're gonna have to play ball. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was I remember growing up. It was a like I
Speaker 1: remember I had a Social Security card and I remember
Speaker 1: my mom being like, you gotta put that in your
Speaker 1: desk royer. Remember, don't touch it. Ever, if somebody comes
Speaker 1: near your your drawer, you shoot them with with this gun. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was crazy. And now it's just like I'd probably
Speaker 1: give out my social like twice a month. Right. But
Speaker 1: but because of those breaches, because so many people have
Speaker 1: your Social Security number now, and because hackers have gotten
Speaker 1: really good at getting into things like um, I think
Speaker 1: it was Experience or TransUnion who were hacked in two
Speaker 1: thousand seventeen. Yeah, that was huge. Um that that was
Speaker 1: it was not only I read not only did it
Speaker 1: basically just totally erode the public's trust and credit bureaus
Speaker 1: to keep our stuff private, like they were the ones
Speaker 1: who were supposed to be unhackable. And I think a
Speaker 1: hundred and thirty seven million social security numbers made it
Speaker 1: out into the wild from that hack. Um that that
Speaker 1: that not only eroded trust in the credit bureaus, it
Speaker 1: was the beginning of the end for using social security
Speaker 1: numbers like we do to authenticate or as identify irs companies.
Speaker 1: Some are moving away from that now, right, Yeah, because
Speaker 1: they're getting sued and they're getting fines and they just
Speaker 1: realized they can't keep this stuff protected. The problem is
Speaker 1: no one knows what's next. A lot of people have
Speaker 1: talked about like blockchain, but nobody understands blockchain, which, by
Speaker 1: the way, we should totally do a blockchain episode. Um,
Speaker 1: but everybody's kind of like, it's probably gonna be blockchain,
Speaker 1: But first time to go figure out what blockchain is,
Speaker 1: and then we'll figure out how to do social security
Speaker 1: numbers through blockchain. I'm sure in some offices they're like,
Speaker 1: you know, the old barcode on the back of the
Speaker 1: neck seems silly, but surewood work. Have you seen Brazil?
Speaker 1: Should we take a break? Oh yeah, let's all right.
Speaker 1: Let's take another break, and we're gonna talk a little
Speaker 1: bit about the rest of the world right after this
Speaker 1: and things and chop and chock stop. So chuck, we're
Speaker 1: going around the world in eighty days in our ninth
Speaker 1: little balloon. Actually, I said, we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the rest of the world. We're only going to talk
Speaker 1: about one more place in the world. Hey man, I
Speaker 1: got Canada. Oh yeah, the UK. Okay. Basically, anywhere there's
Speaker 1: a country with a bureaucracy, in a country where people die,
Speaker 1: there's going to be someone erroneously listed as dead. All right,
Speaker 1: so let's go to India. In India, it's not always
Speaker 1: an accident. Uh, sometimes it's an error. But sometimes, um,
Speaker 1: you can do what they call quote killing people on
Speaker 1: paper end quote um in order to say their property
Speaker 1: is mine, to lay claim to something legally, you can uh,
Speaker 1: you can do so especially I mean they don't it's
Speaker 1: not legal, but it's something that happens no, you can
Speaker 1: bribe an official who will say, yeah, okay, yes, this
Speaker 1: person is dead, thank you for reporting their death. Here
Speaker 1: is their land or cousin or whoever. Well supposedly in
Speaker 1: the um northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Um, it's become
Speaker 1: a real problem there. Um. And there was a man
Speaker 1: there is a man name Lal Bahari who in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy six at the just twenty two, found out he
Speaker 1: was listed as dead and his uncle did his uncle
Speaker 1: do this or did his uncle just get the land?
Speaker 1: And his uncle's family, his uncle's family, they're the one
Speaker 1: that that purposefully listed him as dead just so they
Speaker 1: could get the land. Yep. He went to go get
Speaker 1: a business loan. He was a loomer and he went
Speaker 1: to get a business loan. And to get a business loan,
Speaker 1: he needed documentation of his identity. When he went to
Speaker 1: go get that, the local records office is like, you're dead.
Speaker 1: And it took him seventeen years to undead himself. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Fortunately for the world. He had a great sense of
Speaker 1: um absurdity of humor like yes, but also like the
Speaker 1: humor in absurdy, like he he realized, like this is
Speaker 1: so preposterous, and he really used that as motivation to
Speaker 1: make huge moves. Yeah, he would answer the phone, um
Speaker 1: as dead person, which is uh talkin silent uh. He
Speaker 1: would answer the phone like that. He organized the Uttar
Speaker 1: Pradesh Reta Singh which is Udra Pradesh Dead People's Association,
Speaker 1: And it seems like really brought a lot of like
Speaker 1: attention to this through like almost like public absurdist public
Speaker 1: demonstrations too. Yeah, like parades of dead people walking around
Speaker 1: on the steps of like the government buildings and stuff
Speaker 1: like that. And finally he did have his death overturned legally. Um,
Speaker 1: did you see whether or not he got his land?
Speaker 1: I didn't see that. Actually a great question. I didn't
Speaker 1: even think about that, but yeah I I did not.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but two people, um, because of his
Speaker 1: efforts in that area of India where had their deaths overturned. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was just in one year. Even which why I
Speaker 1: think is cool about him as he founded this organization
Speaker 1: and got his life back in ninety four, it still
Speaker 1: stayed on as the you know, the driving force behind
Speaker 1: the Udhapradesh Dead Person's Association and won an ignoble prize
Speaker 1: for it. Not bad. We did an episode on that too.
Speaker 1: You remember the ignobles man. That was a long time ago. Yep.
Speaker 1: So one more thing I we never really actually said
Speaker 1: what to do if you end up listed incorrectly is
Speaker 1: dead on the death Master file. Start answering the phone
Speaker 1: is dead? Chuck, Yeah, exactly, shame the government. Also, the
Speaker 1: other thing you're supposed to do first is go in
Speaker 1: person to your local Social Security Administration. And by the way,
Speaker 1: this is information directly from the s s A to
Speaker 1: me to you, because I called them. The guy said,
Speaker 1: just bring a driver's license at passport and we'll handle
Speaker 1: it from there. And I was like, wait, that's it.
Speaker 1: He's like, yeah, you know, the information matches, your picture matches.
Speaker 1: That's all you need. And he said, and by handle it,
Speaker 1: you'll mean nothing will happen here. That's right, right, And
Speaker 1: I go, so do you give the person? So they
Speaker 1: give you a letter saying this person's alive, they were
Speaker 1: listed as deceased by mistake, give them their credit or whatever. Um,
Speaker 1: we love you, so Security Administration And I said, do
Speaker 1: you do you give the letter then once they prove
Speaker 1: it or um. He's like no, once the file is updated,
Speaker 1: then we typically send a letter out. And I was like,
Speaker 1: how long is that, you know, And it's weeks easily,
Speaker 1: if not months before you're going to get a letter.
Speaker 1: But if you find out, the first thing you want
Speaker 1: to do go to your local SO security office with
Speaker 1: your passport and or your driver's license and say, surprise, yeah,
Speaker 1: I saw that one person even had to have a
Speaker 1: note from their doctor verifying that they were indeed alive. Weird,
Speaker 1: weird life. That must be weird, gentry. So, uh, if
Speaker 1: you want to know more about the death Master file,
Speaker 1: you can go look it up. It's kind of interesting actually,
Speaker 1: as far as bureaucracy goes. And since I said bureaucracy,
Speaker 1: it's time for a listener, ma'am, I'm gonna call this um.
Speaker 1: This is a follow up on the rape Kits episode,
Speaker 1: which we got a lot of amazing and sad stories
Speaker 1: from that one. Uh. This is about the money. The
Speaker 1: money's because remember on the show we said that you know,
Speaker 1: you don't you get to pay for that stuff for treatment? Yeah,
Speaker 1: apparently you can get money back, which we've meant to
Speaker 1: go back and re record a section and did not.
Speaker 1: So this is by means of following up on that.
Speaker 1: Hey guys, a longtime listener first time writer finished the
Speaker 1: episode on rape kits and realize I could offer some
Speaker 1: information that will hopefully bring some peace of mind. I
Speaker 1: work as a medical biller for a hospital in the Midwest.
Speaker 1: Part of my job is processing the sexual assault claims
Speaker 1: that come in at our hospital. We have a program
Speaker 1: for those who present to the hospital UH after a
Speaker 1: sexual assault. We in partner with the state, cover all
Speaker 1: the charges that result from the initially our visit, and
Speaker 1: the patient has given a voucher for any relevant follow
Speaker 1: up care that they may need over the next three months.
Speaker 1: Is awesome. It is, and we realized that a lot
Speaker 1: of states do this after we had recorded and published
Speaker 1: the show. I'm so glad this person wrote in thould
Speaker 1: say it is good to know. We also take steps
Speaker 1: to ensure that the patient will never see a bill
Speaker 1: or be contacted by our department regards to their visit
Speaker 1: to reduce any re traumatization. I'm the point person for
Speaker 1: this process here handle all the claims personally. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure how many hospitals implement this program, but I hope
Speaker 1: this helps you all know that at least here we
Speaker 1: do as much as we can to alleviate any unnecessary
Speaker 1: burden from our patients during the stressful and sensitive times.
Speaker 1: Thanks for all you guys do. You have transformed many
Speaker 1: days years spent in a cubicle into opportunities to learn.
Speaker 1: Keep doing the great work. And that is from Maria.
Speaker 1: Thank you very much. That was amazing. Yeah, Maria, thanks
Speaker 1: for doing that job too. That's tough stuff. That was
Speaker 1: the antithesis of another email we got who basically said,
Speaker 1: regarding your little soapbox about how society should take on
Speaker 1: that cost, keep your politics to yourself because I disagree.
Speaker 1: I don't know if I saw that one. It was
Speaker 1: a bad one and I just wanted to say that
Speaker 1: that person is a butt head. Oh no, wait, maybe
Speaker 1: I did see that. I couldn't even bring myself to respond.
Speaker 1: I think I did, and I did respond. Oh what
Speaker 1: did you say? I don't remember. Did you tell him
Speaker 1: they were about hecko jump in a lake? There? You? Um? Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with us, whether
Speaker 1: we think you're a butt head or a saint, it
Speaker 1: doesn't matter. We still want to hear from you, you
Speaker 1: can go on to stuffy sho dot com check out
Speaker 1: our social links. You can also send us a good
Speaker 1: old fashioned email wrap it up, spank it on the bottom, uh,
Speaker 1: spray with perfume, and send it off to stuff podcast
Speaker 1: at iHeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is
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Speaker 1: visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.