GOVERNMENT

Dead Still Collect Social Security, Report Says: About 81% of the people in America who die are collecting Social Security benefits. Too often, the checks keep coming after death, an internal investigation says. The report by Richard Kusserow, inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services, said a program designed to process death records is prone to reject information, meaning some deaths are not recorded. The report said rejected information is not fixed and fed back into the system quickly. An auditor, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said there was no estimate of how much money was being paid to people who have died. But the inspector general’s report, issued last month, said fixing the problems would have allowed the system to record an additional 172,105 deaths in 1989.