A new financial report from the Social Security Administration (SSA) shows that the scope of the agency's overpayment problem has continued to grow. As of October 1, the SSA had an uncollected balance of $23 billion in overpayments—money the agency has determined it mistakenly paid to beneficiaries across the country but has not been able to claw back, despite repeated attempts to do so.

In September, a series of investigative reports by KFF Health News and Cox Media Group television stations first revealed the magnitude of the problem and shared the experiences of dozens of people who've received letters from the federal agency demanding repayment, sometimes in the tens of thousands of dollars. At the beginning of fiscal year 2023, the agency's uncollected balance of overpayments was $21.6 billion.

Its latest "Agency Financial Report" also revealed that the SSA made approximately $11.1 billion in new overpayments to beneficiaries during federal fiscal year 2022, the most recent year of data available. That figure represents more than a 65 percent increase in overpayments from the previous year. For the past several years, the agency has routinely distributed between $6 billion and $7 billion in new overpayments each year.