Port Jefferson woman fights to get benefits back after ‘erroneously declared deceased'

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In April, Colleen Weiss visited her doctor’s office only to find out her health insurance had been canceled. When she called the company to ask why, she was told the Social Security Administration (SSA) had said she died. The mistake financially paralyzed her. “I lost my Medicare, I lost my Medicaid,” said Weiss, of Port Jefferson. “I lost my monthly disability checks.” Weiss spent months going back and forth with her local SSA office, trying to prove she’s alive - and still, it got her nowhere. She decided to reach out to Team 12 Investigates for help. “I, myself, saw the News 12 segment and I’m like, how often does this happen?” Weiss asked. Back in May, Team 12 Investigates helped to get answers for a Smithtown man who also had been incorrectly declared deceased by SSA. The agency said mistakes are made in less than 1% of death reports, but that equates to anywhere between 7,000 and 12,000 people a year. Team 12 Investigates contacted the agency again regarding Weiss’s case. Within weeks, she started getting her monthly disability checks again. “I keep this letter with me, it says down here ‘erroneously declared deceased,” Weiss said. Weiss said she was told the mistake was due to a computer error. Team 12 Investigates began digging into how a living person could be recorded as deceased. In a statement, the agency said “SSA cannot guarantee a zero error rate in its posting of death reports, in part because errors can occur at stages outside the agency’s control.” The agency has reported that erroneous death reports can occur due to mistakes made by other federal agencies or by keying errors during manual input on death reports—such as entering the wrong Social Security number. Steps to take if you are mistakenly declared deceased: - Report to your local Social Security office as soon as possible and bring a government-issued ID - Get a correction letter from SSA that shows your death report was a mistake - Request lost benefits in writing - Inform credit agencies, health care companies, the IRS and other entities If the IRS has you erroneously listed as deceased , contact the Tax Advocate Service (TAS) for assistance . It is an independent organization within the IRS that helps to resolve these issues. Though Weiss has been “resurrected,” her case is not entirely restored. She is still owed money from Social Security for the months that she did not receive disability checks. “Maybe if we get the word out there more, Social Security may do a little bit more checks when they're inputting info into a computer so they can stop doing this to people,” said Weiss. "