Every senior citizens' nightmare, and if the DOGE bros have theire way, I expect will hear more stories like this:

Johnson is 82 and still kicking. Yet sometime last month, someone or something led Social Security to both tag him as dead and start clawing back his benefits.

Johnson's strange trip through the netherworld began in February, when a letter from his bank arrived addressed to his wife, Pam.

"We recently received notification of LEONARD A. JOHNSON's passing," it began. "We offer our sincerest condolences ... "

At first she figured it was a scam--her husband, after all, was sitting right there. But then the bank got to the point.

"We know this is a difficult time, and we're here to help," the bank wrote. "We received a request from Social Security Administration to return benefits paid to LEONARD A. JOHNSON's account after their passing."

"There's nothing you need to do--we've deducted the funds from LEONARD A. JOHNSON's account."

Uh oh. It itemized how $5,201 had been stricken from their bank account, on the grounds that Ned wasn't justified to get those benefits--because he was dead. That was for payments he'd received in December and January.

Ned found that his February Social Security check hadn't been paid, and he's yet to receive his March check, either. His Medicare insurance had been canceled. . . .

What followed was a nearly three-week battle to resurrect himself. He called Social Security two or three times a day for two weeks, with each call put on hold and then eventually disconnected. Finally someone answered and gave him an appointment for March 13. Then he got a call delaying that to March 24.

In a huff, he went to the office on the ninth floor of the Henry Jackson Federal Building downtown. It's one of the buildings proposed to be closed under what the AP called "a frenetic and error-riddled push by Elon Musk's budget-cutting advisers."

The cruelty is the point.
Republicans are cruel, mean spirited people.
They show us their true colors every day.
#2 | Posted by snoofy

This man was fortunate that he had other income besides SS and that he was healthy enough to make the repeated daily phone calls, travel to the nearby SS office, which although scheduled to be closed hasn't shut down yet, and then wait for 4 hours in order to speak to someone. A lot of seniors are simply not healthy enough to do that.

Oklahoma man says Social Security benefits terminated without warning or explanation

An Oklahoma City retiree said his Social Security benefits were suspended without warning " and with no explanation given when he reached out. He worries it may have to do with the place he was born, and ongoing Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) cutbacks.

The man, James McCaffrey, who was born to an active-duty U.S. soldier at an overseas Army base, said because of recent comments from DOGE leader Elon Musk, he's worried his benefits were cut because of his foreign birthplace.

McCaffrey said he started to think something was often when he received an unexpected Medicare bill.

"It said that I needed to pay $740 before the 25th of this month or I was going to lose my Medicare," McCaffrey said.

That seemed odd, since his Medicare payment is normally deducted from his Social Security check.

"So I called Medicare," he said. "They returned my call after a wait and told me that they were unable to process it through my Social Security payment, that there was some problem with it. We talked for a bit. He kind of let it out that he thinks it's a possibility that my Social Security was suspended."