Social Security will run 125,000 federal pension payment records against 111 million Medicare records to test who really qualifies for the drug cost subsidy
The two numbers in this notice are 125,000 and 111 million, and the gap between them is the whole design.
The Social Security Administration filed a Privacy Act notice on Thursday setting up a data match with the Office of Personnel Management. OPM will hand over a file of roughly 125,000 records covering new civil service annuitants and those whose annuity has changed. Social Security will compare it against roughly 111 million records in its Medicare Database file. The purpose, stated twice in the document in nearly identical words, is to verify what people said about themselves when they applied for Extra Help with Medicare Prescription Drug Plan Costs, the subsidy that covers premiums and cost sharing inside Part D.
Four fields cross: name and date of birth, Social Security number, civil service claim number, and the amount of the current gross civil service benefit. That last one is the point of the exercise, because Extra Help is means tested and a federal annuity is income the applicant is expected to report.
It runs in both directions
The notice does not describe this only as a check.
The same paragraph that sets out verification also says the data will let the agency identify people who may qualify for Extra Help as part of its Medicare outreach, which is the unusual half. A matching program that finds eligibility as well as testing it is doing something other than policing a form, and the document treats both uses as one purpose rather than two.
The document contradicts itself about what it is
The action line calls this a notice of a new matching program. The first sentence of the supplementary information calls it the re-establishment of a matching program that is set to expire.
Both statements are in the same filing, and nothing in it reconciles them. The practical effect is the same either way, and the difference matters mainly to anyone counting how many of these arrangements exist.
The legal footing is section 1631(f) of the Social Security Act for the agreement itself, with the computer matching authorised under sections 1144 and 1860D-14(a)(3). Supplemental Security Income recipients are deemed eligible for the drug benefit automatically under a separate provision, which the notice cites. The systems being matched are OPM's Civil Service Retirement and Insurance Records and Social Security's Medicare Database File.
Comments close 30 days after publication. The program takes effect on 16 September, or 30 days after publication if that falls later, and it lasts 18 months.
