Disability recipient told she must pay back hundred of dollars

TULSA, Okla. - Ann needs a power chair to get around her apartment.

"I'm paralyzed on the left side."  

She says she stayed in a nursing home for rehab for 24 days at the beginning of the year, but then returned home.   

That number of days in the nursing home was important Ann says, because along with social security, she gets a disability check each month, it's called SSI.

 "After 30 days you're not qualified to receive your SSI."     

 Ann's SSI comes to $128 a month.

"The $128 is what I get for such luxuries as food and medicine, the things I need."   

So Ann says it was devastating when she didn't get last month's SSI payment, but did get a letter saying she had to pay back more than a thousand dollars worth of payments.   

Ann says a social security rep told her an audit of their records showed she was living in a nursing home all year, and shouldn't have been getting those monthly SSI payments.

 "The records have been wrong, and we have verification proving it."  

Ann says her home health aide hand delivered that proof to the social security office several weeks ago, which included the information that shows Ann was only in a nursing home for those 24 days earlier this year.

But that, along with weeks of calls, didn't resolve the issue.

And Ann says she desperately needs her SSI payments, and certainly doesn't have a thousand bucks to repay social security.

 "You can imagine what it's going to be like around here, there will be no Christmas."

Ann finally called the 2News Problem Solvers, and we got in touch with the Social Security Administration's regional office.

A representative quickly researched the case, and it wasn't long until Ann got great news.   
 
She didn't have to pay back that thousand dollars, and she'll keep getting her monthly SSI payments.   

 "I'm ready to celebrate, I'm ready."

Christmas, Ann says, will certainly be a little merrier.