Social Security Records Dumped in Trash

People who advocate that the federal government take over the health care systems in the US should make note of the following story.

The inspector general's office for the Social Security Administration confirmed Wednesday that documents discarded by employees of contractors hired by the Social Security Administration in Chicago came from files belonging to residents in Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Cincinnati.

The workers were supposed to weed out duplicate documents while assembling the files for hearings, but they also got rid of other documents in the process.

The "other documents" included medical records and other information from hundreds of Social Security disability applicants in Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, Michigan and Minnesota. Presently, there are over a thousand (not hundreds) people awaiting hearings for benefits with files of incomplete or indeterminate status.

It is not thought that anything criminal was involved in the dumping of the records. That's unfortunate. Uncorrectable bureaucratic ineptitude should be criminal.