In the last few days there has been a torrent of misleading and, in some cases, outright inaccurate information about Social Security and Medicare. It began with Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and very public face of the Department of Government Efficiency, posting on X that, “Having tens of millions of people marked in Social Security as ‘ALIVE’ when they are definitely dead is a HUGE problem.” He included an image of what appears to be a spreadsheet with age brackets. It showed more people on the Social Security database than live in the U.S. by a wide margin, and about 16 million people over the age of 110.
His post sparked a social media frenzy contending that his “findings” showed there was rampant fraud in the Social Security system, including the debunked claim that immigrants here illegally are receiving Social Security benefits. The frenzy culminated with the new Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, saying on Fox News:
“Think about it. We have almost $4 trillion of entitlements, and no one's ever looked at it before. You know Social Security is wrong. You know Medicaid and Medicare are wrong. So, he is going to cut a trillion dollars.”
Leaving the fact-free universe of social media, let’s examine some actual facts about the Social Security system.
A board of trustees oversees the operation of Social Security. The trustees are the sitting Secretaries of Treasury, Health and Human Services and Labor, and an administrator appointed by the president. Therefore,...
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