What Happens When the Government Thinks You're Dead?

It’s bad enough when the government knows you’re alive – there are taxes to pay, laws to be followed, all sorts of boring and unpleasant things. But each year, thousands of Americans find out life is far, far worse when the government thinks you are dead.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff. You should know, a production of I
Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, I'm welcome to the podcast.
I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles w Chuck, Brian, there's Jerry
over there. Jerry's not eating anything today. Chalk there is clear?
And did you just do that as a coaster? Yes,

(00:24):
I don't want to make a chinky sound every time,
Like okay, I thought, I don't want that. I want
this now, I get it. Did you hear that? You
didn't hear anything? No, I'm I said everyone. Josh just
folded up his notes and put his can of cola
down on that. And I've never seen you do that,
And I thought you were trying to preserve this cheap.

(00:46):
This thing is tougher than okay. So it was a
sound thing. Sure, it's it's a sound dampening technique. Can
look at us after all these years, just came up
with that up in our game. Um so, Chuck, do
you remember we did a Social Security number episode? Did we?
I thought, so? You don't remember that one. It was

(01:06):
one of those ones where you're like, my eyes are
going to bleed because this is so boring. But it
turned out to be pretty interesting. It was one of
those remember that. But we should give a little bit
of a refresher on social security numbers. Okay, yeah, here's mine.
Oh you're gonna give your your to eight seven, nine four. No,
I don't even because what if I just accidentally said

(01:26):
someone else's like made one up that? Yeah, and some
dudes listening, it's like, dude, how'd you know Todd? It's
always Todd. I don't know. So social Security numbers, get
this everybody. They first started being issued in November of
nine and the Social Security Administration was created to administer

(01:52):
a new deal program of federal benefits, things like welfare
or retirement benefits, Medicare UM. The entire reason any of
us originally were given a Social Security number was to
track our lifetime earnings and to um determine how much
we'd put into Social Security so that when we retired,

(02:14):
they could determine how much we should get out in retirement.
That's why everyone has a sofial security number. And because
there are nine digits UM, there's something like a billion
different possible combinations, and we're about halfway towards using up
the sow security numbers. Interesting but but probably gaining fast.
We are starting to gain much faster than we were before.

(02:35):
A good point, but we still got plenty of time.
But because of this um, social security numbers get retired
when you die, which we'll get to. But originally, when
when you were given social Security number, that was it.
It wasn't meant for anything else but to track your
earnings and to figure out your retirement. Right. Yeah, not
like when you get to go to get a haircut

(02:57):
basically and they ask you for your Social Security number. Yeah.
The seventies, the federal government said, okay, there's a couple
of other things that you should really have your sol
Security number for a passport, um, if you go to
open a bank account, that was a new one too.
I'll buy that. Um. But then, like you said, like
as computers came along, now everybody asks what it's become

(03:18):
an identifier in an authenticator And that is really bad.
That is not what we should be doing with social
Security numbers. It really not only that, but the phone
numbers and everything and addresses. It just annoys me. And
I'm not like a conspiracy guy. It's not like I think, like, oh,
what are they going to do with this? It just
annoys me. Well, and I can't get a haircut without provide.

(03:41):
I'm like, I have cash in my hand, you have scissors.
Can we just do this right? Can we do it
like Floyd style? Yeah? You know, but it annoys me.
But even if you take away the annoyance, companies have
proven time and time and time again that they're not
to be trusted protecting your so Security number because to
authenticate you saying who you are who you say you are,

(04:04):
they've got to have your SOI Security number on file.
And when somebody hacks into their databases, they get your
SOI Security number. All of your information is right there,
and it's become a real problem. But it's also become
a real problem living a modern life without giving out
your SO Security number. Right. So we say all this
to point out that if for some reason, you didn't

(04:26):
have a Social Security number any longer, it would be
tough to navigate life. And that actually happens to some people. Yeah,
if you've seen the movie Brazil, Oh, is it like this?
You never saw Brazil? It's it's sort of this in
a future dystopian world, but you know, basically like it's

(04:48):
it's bureaucracy at its best of someone who's you know,
dead or not dead, and the government mixes it up.
Is that what Brazil is about? Yeah? I did not
know that. Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up because
we would have heard from people. It's a yeah, it's good,
right it is. And you should go listen to the
movie Crush episode on Brazil with Jonathan Colton. Okay, yeah,

(05:10):
I didn't know that one. That one slipped past me.
I wasn't talking to you, but sure, you're welcome to listen. Thanks.
I'm part of everybody. I had to go to the
Social Security Office recently to get a card because of
this job in our new company. Really, yeah, I had
to prove, you know whatever, that I'm alive. You didn't unemployable.

(05:30):
I guess you didn't. Just give him your passport. I
couldn't find my passport because I'm in between houses right
now and it was buried somewhere. Okay, but you do
have it because we're probably going to Toronto this year.
I do have it. I did find it kind of
after I went to the Social Security Office. But all
that was just to say that if you think the
d m V is a pit of despair, just go

(05:53):
to the social Security want to it's not fun. I
really don't want to know. So, um, okay, you can
imagine how bad it is when everything's just hunky dory
and you just need a copy of your card. That's
all you needed. Right For some people, some poor SAPs
out there, they are thought by the government and listed

(06:14):
by the government as having died. And that is a
big problem if you're alive. Yes, because again you need
your Social Security number for everything to start with. And
then secondly, because we have enough Social Security numbers to
go around, Like I said, when you die, you're so
security number gets retired with you. They hang in in

(06:36):
the rafters of your local NBA franchise. That's exactly right.
If you look really closely, they're all up there. But um,
that's that is a problem for somebody who gets listed
as dead on what's called the death master file. Do
I need to say it now? Even somebody listening to
the very first stuff you should know right now, they

(06:57):
know what you're saying. Here's a bunch good band names
in here, but death master files pretty good. So uh,
It's also called the Social Security Death Index, but death
master files way better. I think you would agree. It
depends on who you're talking to. I think genealogists typically
call it the S S d I. Everybody else calls
it the death master file. That's what I saw, you
know why, because they don't know how to party, or

(07:19):
they get their own little weird party going on. Oh yeah,
I didn't think about that. Um. Yeah, you gotta look
at people differently sometimes. I was trying to think of
the bumper sticker. Genealogists do it blank in the in
the archives. Genealogists do it with their d NA, with
their dead ancestors. It's two bumper stickers. Just having ellipses

(07:43):
had be kind of fun. So, uh, all right, where
were we the d MF Al right, it's it was
established the same time the Social Security numbers were back
in nineteen thirty six, and then it took all the
way until nineteen eighty before the public could even see
this list, right right. There was a Freedom of Information
Act that was filed back in UM and there was

(08:07):
a lawsuit in the federal court said you know what, yeah,
this is this is public information. You have to publish this.
And there's actually like a master death Master file that's
called the New Newmandent and that's like everything, and that's
the that's the one that the death master File is
derived from, the public version of it is the death

(08:28):
master file, right which, when you die, there a bunch
of ways that your name can get to the s
s A, the Social Security Administration. Sometimes it's a funeral home.
Sometimes it's from like a hospital. Sometimes it's from your family, um,
because it's the family's responsibility ultimately to report it. But

(08:49):
most of the time the funeral home is the one
that actually does is like a service. I wouldn't have
known that. But I also saw, um, well, now you know, um,
there's probably some poor stuff. You should know a listener,
our condolences, who's dealing with this right now? It's your
responsibility to go report this to the Social Security Administration. Yeah, okay,
that's sad. I also saw that your bank, the postal

(09:13):
service some other randos are legally allowed to report your
death as well, so as the post off post person
to saying like I haven't picked up their mail in
like three weeks, they're dead to me, I think I
should just report this. I don't. I don't know I could.
I could not find the procedure from that anything other
than a couple of good sources mentioned the postal service

(09:36):
as a legal place, the legal entity that can report
your death to the Feds. Alright, so why do they
want this Death Master File? Of course, if you have
paid UM, well, the government needs to know if you're
not around anymore. It's kind of that simple. There's a
couple of reasons why. Yes, they need to know, because
you get a little dough They can't have your sobsecurity

(09:58):
number out there. They need to know that you're deceased
UM because they don't want to be paying UM income
tax refunds if somebody starts following them fraudulently. They don't
want people opening bank accounts in your name. They want
to make sure that you're listed as dead. And so
that's what the Death Master File does. It kind of

(10:20):
serves as the storehouse for all the people in America
who have been dead basically since the sixties, but it
goes as far back as nineteen thirty six or thirty seven,
which is surprisingly more than a hundred million people. Yes,
but they think that there's maybe up to sixteen million
dead people missing from this list. It's not it's not perfect.

(10:40):
We'll spoil now. Well, I guess we should then follow
that statement by saying there are tens of thousands of
people on that list who should not be on that list,
right exactly, But before we get to there, um, this
Death master File originally was so Social Security could track
who was dead and who wasn't, so they could determine
who to pay Social Security Administration benefit out to the survivors.

(11:01):
Get this, did you know this? If you're in America
and you're the recipient, you're the survivor of somebody who
gets so Security, you get a cool two hundred and
fifty five dollars to help bury them. Yeah, that's when
I said you get a little dough that I meant little,
a little dough. Yeah, maybe like one of the fancy
handles on the casket would be covered by that. I

(11:22):
don't even think you can get cremated for two hundred dollars.
I don't know. I don't even think they'll leave you
in a ditch out back for two hundred dollars. A
sky BURI will cost more than that. Maybe that try
State crematorium would take your two hundred fifty dollars. But
that's it. Do you remember them? Oh? Sure? Yeah? Evil?
So uh like you said mistakes are made. And this

(11:44):
is where it turns slightly. Brazil. There was an investigation
in two thousand and eleven and they actually named grave mistakes,
which is hysterical by Scripts Howard News service. And what
they did was they took uh this master file from
three different years two thou two thousand eleven. They created

(12:05):
a computer program to basically just compare them to see
what they came up with, and that they found uh third,
almost thirty two thousand living people who were listed as
decease and ninety eight or two thousand eight that were
then taken off that list after they realized that they
goofed up two thousand eleven. So these people had spent months, years,

(12:27):
maybe um listed as dead. And here's the problem. It's
bad enough if you go to apply for Medicare because
you've retired or social Security benefits and the government says denied, UM,
you're dead and you're listed as dead because as far
as the government's concerned, if you're on this, you're dead
to them. That's bad enough. But remember that Freedom of

(12:51):
Information Act UM lawsuit that opened the thing up to
being published publicly. The reason why that suit was filed
is because the business community said, hey, we can really
use that thing there. It's basically it would be like
a big do not take checks from these people list
for all dead Americans. Because if somebody comes to us

(13:13):
and wants to open a bank account, wants to get
an insurance policy, wants to get a car, wants to
get a job, it doesn't matter, wants to do something
where they could take us for a ride, if they're
a fraud, then if we had this list to check against,
like social Security numbers or names or whatever, we could
root out fraud and we could defend ourselves from identity

(13:35):
theft and the fraud that's perpetrated by it. And so banks,
insurance companies, car dealerships, cable companies, employers, everybody, other government agencies.
They all barbers, they don't forget them. They all use
this death Master file, which is available publicly to check

(13:57):
your applications against. And if the government it says that
you're dead, it says that on this file, whether it's
right or wrong, you're dead. And that's a whole lot
of problems for you. We're gonna get into those right
after this things chop cho stop. So before we broke,

(14:41):
I was talking about that. Uh, that scripts um investigation
and there was an inspector of General Support in two
thousand and eight that kind of pulled back the curtain
on this stuff, and Social Security said, uh, yeah, that's
about right. There's there's a lot of people tens of
thousands that we think are dead and aren't dead, but

(15:02):
they're they're success rates pretty good. Yeah, and he said,
they said, but we're at a ninety nine point five
nine rate of accuracy, which is not too bad for
a government bureaucracy. That's really good. And they said that
of the time. Can you can fix it in just
a year, just a hellish year, Yeah, not too bad. Um.

(15:26):
And so they basically admitted two being a government. Uh.
I don't want to knock them too much because it
feels like everyone's always, you know, knocking government work. But
they're basically saying like, yeah, man, these names are miskeeds
or these numbers are miss keyeds. Sometimes it happens, yeah,

(15:46):
pretty much. So, Um, the thing is that point for
one error rate, that's tens of thousands of people every year.
There's like two point seven million people added to this
list every year who die in America, right, so it
adds up to a lot of errors. The thing is
the Social Security Administration UM. So they take their deathmasterfile,

(16:10):
they hand it over to the National Technical Information Service,
and they're the ones who distributed to all the insurance companies,
the genealogy websites. I think ancestry dot com publishes it. UM,
the yeah, insurance companies, everybody who wants to do a
background check on you. They all get their their versions
of this from them, the National Technical Information Service. But

(16:34):
part of the agreement to get this from them you
have to pay for it, is that you have to
keep your d MF up to date. Because if you
just buy one every once in a while UM, and
the Social Security Administration finds an air on and updates
their file, if you don't go get the new file,
your old file is still going to have that error.

(16:56):
And that's when it becomes problematic for the people who
are listed as deceased when they try to go get credit,
and it kind of has a tendency to spread once
it's out there. Yeah, So, like I said, sometimes it's
being mis keyed. UM. One. I think they said like
one out of every two hundred is just from clerical error. UM.

(17:17):
Sometimes it can be like, Um, a family member goes
to report to death and they accidentally make a mistake
where they might end up being on the death list. Yeah.
I don't know how that happens, but it does happen.
There are people like Don Pilger human error, married du Bord,
who who apparently married du Board just gave up. She

(17:39):
She's like, my husband can get credit cards still, I'm
just gonna live off of it. Uh. Sometimes you this
one woman named Candice Atkins just accidentally clicked deceased on
a tax return on an electronic filing, and that was it.
Can you imagine now? I can't believe there's not an undo?
That's yeah, I was looking at me that she had submitted.

(17:59):
I guess you could probably undone it in the moment,
but she didn't realize it and submitted it. Right, But
you should still be able to undo that, you would
think so. Um. And then there are some weird things,
these uh anomalies that you dug up. Um. More than
of false listings made in two thousand seven were from Illinois. YEP.

(18:19):
It sounds like a hiccup in the system to me,
I hiccup in the system or a super lazy data
entry person. I think. Yeah, Uh, more than two million
Americans were falsely listed as dying on the fift and
that was just an internal policy, is to use the
fifteenth as a default value when they didn't know at

(18:40):
the middle of the month. Sounds good to me. Um,
And I guess that was just the question of not
going to the trouble of verifying the information, right so um.
And it can happen the other way too, you can
be I think at least six million dead Americans are
labeled as alive, which is a huge problem because you're
you're just you're information is out there ready to be

(19:01):
abused by the nefarious. Well, no, that's the opposite. If
you're if you're listed as deceased but you're still alive,
your information is being published and can be used for
identity fraud. If you're actually dead and not listed, if
somebody knows that you're dead and not listed, they can
use your stuff to to perpetrate fraud against the government. Yeah,

(19:23):
that's what I was saying. Yeah, sixty seven thousand of
those people of those numbers were used to report three
billion dollars in income between two thousand and six and
two thousand eleven, and that's a lot of text return refunds,
so fraud. Yeah, so it's a problem both ways, where
either you're dead and you're not listed on there, or

(19:45):
you're not dead and they listed you anyway. And like
I was saying earlier, this, once this information gets out there,
because there's so many different entities getting this list, once
it's out there, it's days out there, it's very tough
to go around to everyone and and get this information changed.

(20:05):
Even once you get it changed with the Social Security Administration,
because while it's a requirement to keep your your list
up to date, if you're a subscriber, there's no enforcement
to it. There's nobody who comes along and says, let
me see your list. Oh it's not a to date,
give me give me ten dollars that you're fine. There's
nobody enforcing it. So once it's out there, it's very

(20:28):
tough to undo. It takes forever, uh well less than
a year on average supposedly. So there are a lot
of horror stories, um for what this can due to
someone's life. Um, this one person Rivers, what's the first name,
Judy Rivers. Judy Rivers Rivers cuomo Um. Police actually detained

(20:50):
Judy Rivers from using because she used a debit card,
her own debit card at a Walmart at Walmart Plus.
She also had a mountain dew bottle size lab in
her pocket. Uh. But in like it seems like all
of these cases. It ranges from stuff like, um, your
insurance gets all messed up, or your maybe disability checks

(21:13):
or your Medicaid payments, or you're trying to get a
home loan or trying to get a credit card, like
anything that you can think of where social Security number
might help. You can't get a haircut. You should see
how long the hair is on these people. Even if
you have cash, they won't do it. The Rivers ended
up living out of her car for six months. Yeah,
she had just a really bad time of it for

(21:35):
five years. Um and at first she didn't know what
was going on because she was frozen out of her
bank accounts. Because this is something we said like like
you you can't get future loans, you can't get future
insurance policies, you can't get future credit. But also the
stuff that you already have, your current bank accounts, all
that stuff gets frozen because you're listed is dead and

(21:58):
so that comes up on the computer and your account
gets frozen. And even when you show up and say, hey,
it's me, you know me, the teller can't do anything
about it. The bank can't do anything about it. It's
it's done. And now you've just been pitted against the system. Yes,
and it's like there's no door you can go knock

(22:18):
on and say, hey, we can clear this up in
just a few minutes. I'm clearly alive. You just click
the few little things you need to click to get
my life back. Because the c US government it's not
nearly that easy. So I guess, said Chuck. That brings
up what to do, because there actually are procedures in place,
Like we said, the Social Security Administration says this is

(22:39):
not fully accurate. Anybody gets this list needs to keep
updating it as we update it. I think they released
an updated list weekly. They don't even tell you though.
You find out the hard way almost always. That's a
big one. Yeah, it's not like they say, by the way,
we found an error. Um, because they don't know. They
don't know you're alive. So I actually called the Social
Security Administration. I did because I wanted answers. You didn't

(23:03):
go to the office no, I didn't know. It was
a little laterward. It wasn't cowardless, it was laziness. So, UM,
I was talking to like just the the guy who answered,
and he knew exactly what I was talking about, knew
all the procedures. But I asked him, I was like,
do you guys ever uncover this yourselves? Or is it
when people come to you that you know there's a mistake.
He's like, yeah, when people come to us. So supposedly

(23:24):
there's all these reforms in place and all that, but
I think still for the most part, when an error
is uncovered, it's because you found it out. But even
if they do find it out, yes, what you said
is true, they don't inform the person, which is kind
of a violation of the UM the Privacy Act, right,
I would think so from what I understand, it is

(23:46):
like anytime your confidential information is breached and made public, UM,
you're supposed to be informed about that. So the s
s A should be sending out letters. As far as
I know, they do not. I love this quote in
here UM under the section on what to do, Like
the Social Security Administration is trying to correct this, and
there's a quote from someone who works there that said

(24:09):
that sometimes they'll go out and see if old Americans
are really still alive, and it it says this, we
go to medicare and see if anyone hasn't been to
medicare for three years, and if they haven't been, we
try to go out and make a phone call to
call them and see if they're you know, still here.

(24:29):
And the interviewer was like, are you drunk? That's what
it sounds like. That was the follow up question. Oh man,
So yeah, they, I mean supposedly because of things like that.
Scripts Howard News Service investigation in two eleven sixty minutes
did a big one and I think this is right
up there, Alley, Yeah for sure. Um, yes, it is

(24:50):
very sixteen minutes kind of story. Like the truth of
what you just have ran through me like a bolt. Um.
But the Social Security Administration has finally kind of started
to be responsive and they are supposedly undertaking reforms, including
having investigators try to root this out themselves, which ironically
they're relying on other government databases like this guy said

(25:11):
Medicare to check their records against. They've stopped taking reports
from the state and now only except um direct reports
from people. But that in itself opened up another problem
because they went back and cleared out the records of
like five million Americans whose deaths have been reported from

(25:31):
state databases, so that six million went to something like
eleven million of dead people who aren't on there. Now,
are they actually recommending that you pull your credit report
three times a year? Yes? Really? Yes, that seems like
I don't know, you're not like that affects your credit.

(25:52):
I don't know if that one does. I know it's
free for sure, but I don't know if it affects
your credit or not. But yeah, so you get access
to your the credit reports from the three big bureaus, right,
are you gonna do that? You have you set up
calendar reminders? No, I'm going to now like once a
quarter the rest of your life to make sure you're
not listed as dead. I haven't had time today yet.

(26:13):
It seems like if you're an active consumer in the world,
you would find out very quickly, very quickly, um, without
having to do that. Yeah, that script service though. When
they found the like thirty four thousand people who have
been listed as dead, they tried to contact as many
of them as they could, and they said about half
of the people were well aware that they were listed
as dead names through nightmare struggles, but strangely like half

(26:37):
had no idea what they were talking about. So it's like,
what kind of life do you have to live to
not be aware of that? Because you you or I
would come up against it within a week or a
month or something. It seems like like there would be
something that came up where it's like, wait a minute,
but like it says this information isn't is incomplete, or
it says you're dead or something like that. We find

(26:57):
out pretty or just to go get money out of
a cash machine, it might say, sorry, your pen doesn't work.
But I think the recommendation is in addition to finding
out that your listed is dead, there's also a lot
of other stuff that that you can kind of keep
tabs on by looking at your credit report three times
a year, once every four months. Yeah, And they say

(27:18):
the real solution for all of us would be if
every company on the planet doesn't require Well here's the thing, though,
they can't legally require your Social Security number two open
up or start a telephone in your name at a home,
but they'll ask for it, and if you refuse to
give it, like you may not be able to get

(27:39):
at all, or you may just have a really really
hard time. Yeah, they can refuse to do business with you.
And that's the crux of the problem because that de
facto means that you need to play ball, whether you
want to give your Social Security number out or not
to if you want that internet service or that cable service,
or you want that haircut, you're gonna have to a ball. Yeah,

(28:01):
it was I remember growing up. It was a like
I remember I had a Social Security card and I
remember my mom being like, you gotta put that in
your destroyer. Remember, don't touch it ever. If somebody comes
near your your drawer, you shoot them with with this gun. Yeah.
It was crazy. And now it's just like I'd probably
give out my Social like twice a month. Right. But

(28:24):
but because of those breaches, because so many people have
your Social Security number now, and because hackers have gotten
really good at getting into things like UM I think
it was Experience or TransUnion who were hacked in two
thousand seventeen U UM that that was it was not
only I read not only did it basically just totally

(28:45):
erode the public's trust and credit bureaus to keep our
stuff private, like they were the ones who were supposed
to be unhackable. And I think a hundred and thirty
seven million social security numbers made it out into the
why old from that hack um that that that not
only eroded trust in the credit cars, it was the

(29:06):
beginning of the end for using social security numbers like
we do to authenticate or as identify irs companies. Some
are moving away from that now, right, yeah, because they're
getting sued and they're getting fines and they just realized
they can't keep this stuff protected. The problem is no
one knows what's next. A lot of people have talked
about like blockchain, but nobody understands blockchain, which, by the way,

(29:27):
we should totally do a blockchain episode, um, but everybody's
kind of like, it's probably gonna be blockchain, but first
time to go figure out what blockchain is, and then
we'll figure out how to do social security numbers through blockchain.
I'm sure in some offices they're like, you know, the
old barcode on the back of the neck seems silly,
but surewood work. Have you seen Brazil? Should we take

(29:48):
a break? Oh yeah, let's all right, let's take another break,
and we're gonna talk a little bit about the rest
of the world right after this and things and chop
cho so chuck, We're going around the world in eighty

(30:29):
days in our nice little balloon. Actually, I said, we're
going to talk about the rest of the world. We're
only going to talk about one more place in the world. Hey, man,
I got Canada. Oh yeah, the UK. Okay, Basically, anywhere
there's a country with a bureaucracy, in a country where
people die, there's going to be someone erroneously listed as dead.

(30:50):
All right, so let's go to India. Okay that in India.
It's not always an accident. Uh, sometimes it's an error.
But sometimes, um, you can do what they call quote
killing people on paper end quote um, in order to
say their property is mine, to lay claim to something legally,
you can, uh, you can do so especially, I mean

(31:13):
they don't. It's not legal, but it's something that happens. No,
you can bribe an official who will say, yeah, okay, yes,
this person is dead, thank you for reporting their death.
Here is their land or cousin or whoever. Well, supposedly
in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. Um, it's become
a real problem there. Um And there was a man.

(31:36):
There is a man named Lal Bahari who in nineteen
seventy six, at the age of twenty two, found out
he was listed as dead and his uncle. Did his
uncle do this or did his uncle just get the land?
And uncle's family, Uh, his uncle's family, they're the one
that that purposefully listed him as dead just so they

(31:56):
could get the land. He went to go get a
business loan. He was a loom and he went to
get a business loan. And to get a business loan,
he needed documentation of his identity. When he went to
go get that, the local records office is like, you're dead.
And it took him seventeen years to undead himself. Yeah,
fortunately for the world. He had a great sense of

(32:19):
um absurdity of humor like yes, but also like the
humor in absurdity, like he he realized, like this is
so preposterous, and he really used that as motivation to
make huge moves. Yeah, he would answer the phone um
as dead person, which is uh talk is that he

(32:40):
would pronounced I think he would answer the phone like that.
He organized the Uttar Pradesh Retalk Singh which is Udra
Pradesh Dead People's Association. And it seems like really brought
a lot of like attention to this through like almost
like public absurdist public demonstrations e shamings too, Yeah, like

(33:01):
parades of dead people walking around on the steps of
like the government buildings and stuff like that. And finally
he did have his death overturned legally. Um, did you
see whether or not he got his land? I didn't
see that. Actually a great question. I didn't even think
about that, but yeah I I did not. I don't know,

(33:22):
but two people, um, because of his efforts in that
area of India where had their deaths overturned. Yeah, that
was just in one year even which why I think
is cool about him as he founded this organization and
got his life back in ninety four but still stayed

(33:43):
on as the you know, the driving force behind the
Udapradesh Dead Person's Association and won an Ignoble prize for it.
Not bad. We did an episode on that too, You
remember the ignobles Man. That was a long time ago,
ye yea. So one more thing I we never really
actually he said what to do if you end up
listed incorrectly is dead on the death Master file, start

(34:05):
answering the phone is dead Chuck, Yeah, exactly, shame the government. Also,
the other thing you're supposed to do first is go
in person to your local Social Security Administration. And by
the way, this is information directly from the s s
A to me to you, because I called them. The
guy said, just bring a driver's license at passport and

(34:26):
we'll handle it from there. And I was like, wait,
that's it. He's like, yeah, you know, the information matches,
your picture matches. That's all you need. And he said
and by handle it, you'll mean nothing will happen here.
That's right, right, And I go, so do you give
the person? So they give you a letter saying this
person is alive, they were listed as deceased by mistake,
give them their credit or whatever. Um, we love you,

(34:49):
So Security Administration And I said, do you do you
give the letter then once they prove it or um.
He's like no, once the file is updated, then we
typically send the letter out. And I was like, how
long is that? You know? And it's weeks easily, if
not months before you're going to get a letter. But
if you find out the first thing you want to
do go to your local SO Security office with your

(35:11):
passport and or your driver's license and say surprised. Yeah,
I saw that one person even had to have a
note from their doctor verifying that they were indeed alive. Weird,
weird life. That must be weird country. So, uh, if
you want to know more about the death master file,
you can go look it up. It's kind of interesting actually,

(35:33):
as far as bureaucracy goes. And since I said bureaucracy,
it's time for a listener, ma'am, I'm gonna call this um.
This is a follow up on the rape Kits episode,
which we got a lot of amazing and sad stories
from that one. Uh. This is about the money. The
money's because remember on the show we said that you

(35:54):
know you don't you have to pay for that stuff
for treatment. Yeah, apparently you can get money back, which
we meant to go back and re record a section
and did not. So this is by means of following
up on that. Hey, guys, a longtime listener, first time
writer finished the episode on rape Kits and realize I
could offer some information that will hopefully bring some peace

(36:16):
of mind. I work as a medical biller for a
hospital in the Midwest. Part of my job is processing
the sexual assault claims that come in at our hospital.
We have a program for those who present to the
hospital UH after a sexual assault. We in partner with
the state, cover all the charges that result from the
initially our visit, and the patient has given a voucher

(36:37):
for any relevant follow up care that they may need
over the next three months. Is awesome, it is, and
we realized that a lot of states do this after
we had recorded and published the show. I'm so glad,
this person wrote in this Yeah, it is good to know.
We also take steps to ensure that the patient will
never see a bill or be contacted by our department

(36:57):
regards to their visit to reduce any retraum mitization. I'm
the point person for this process here handle all the
claims personally. I'm not sure how many hospitals implement this program,
but I hope this helps you all know that at
least here we do as much as we can to
alleviate any unnecessary burden from our patients during the stressful
and sensitive times. Great thanks for all you guys do.

(37:18):
You have transformed many days years spent in a cubicle
into opportunities to learn. Keep doing the great work, and
that is from Maria. Thank you very much. That was amazing. Yeah, Maria,
thanks for doing that job too. That's tough stuff. That
was the antithesis of another email we got, who basically said,
regarding your little soapbox about how society should take on

(37:41):
that cost, keep your politics to yourself because I disagree.
I don't know if I saw that one. It was
a bad one and I just wanted to say that
that person is a butt head. Oh no, wait, maybe
I did see that. I couldn't even bring myself to respond.
I think I did, and I did respond. Oh what
did you say? I don't remember. Did you tell him
they're hecko jump in a lake? There? Um? Well, if

(38:03):
you want to get in touch with us, whether we
think you're a butt head or a saint, it doesn't matter.
We still want to hear from you, you can go
onto stuff you shao dot com check out our social links.
You can also send us a good old fashioned email,
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with perfume, and send it off to stuff podcast at

(38:24):
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