For all of you out there aching to see the federal government take over our health care system, here is a little taste of what you might be in for.

No one knows how the Social Security Administration decided Doris Pennington was dead, but she has spent the past week, including a visit to the doctor, trying to convince the agency she is very much alive.

Pennington, 76, a retired schoolteacher in this Eastern Washington city, learned of the flub when a granddaughter went to the bank on Dec. 10 to cash a check from her.

“They told her her grandma was no longer banking with that bank,” Pennington told the Tri-City Herald, “and she said, ‘What? My grandma has always banked here.”‘

As the granddaughter listened, a bank official telephoned Pennington and told her that Social Security had declared her dead on Nov. 22.

A block had been placed on her checking account and the bank returned her Social Security check.

Calling the federal agency, she spent about an hour on hold and then got someone who asked if her husband had recently died.

“I said, ‘No, he hasn’t. He’s very much alive. Have you got him down as being deceased, too?”‘ Pennington recalled. “She said, ‘I can’t give you that information.”‘

The woman suggested a doctor’s note might help, Pennington said, so off she went to her physician’s office.

“He just wrote out a thing on a prescription pad saying that he had seen me and examined me and I was alive and well,” she said.

Pennington also visited the Social Security office in nearby Kennewick, presented her driver’s license and Social Security card and was told an effort would be made to reinstate her, but she won’t know whether that has happened before early January.

The source of the foul-up remains a mystery.

“They just told me they don’t know,” she said. “They said it happens more often than you think — not a daily occurrence, but it does happen.”

In our justice system we have what is commonly referred to as innocent until proven guilty, in this case we have dead until proven alive. The Social Security office, without ever recieving a death certificate has declared someone dead, cut off their bank account, and suspended payments. The burden of proof now rests on an elderly woman to convince them she is still alive!

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