The Security of Numbers

We count on digits to manage our existence

The following piece is one in a series of letters to my now-newborn granddaughter.

Dear Leila,

I am happy to say that I have seen and touched you in the flesh. But as far as the U.S. government is concerned, you do not currently exist.

That’s because your father informed me the other day that you don’t have a Social Security Number. You are not losing any sleep over this, and I trust that you will get one in due course. In theory, this should not matter very much: according to current protocols, you will not be eligible to receive Social Security payments until 2087. In practice, however, it matters a great deal: your parents’ health insurance company cannot cover the bills incurred by your arrival until it gets the SSN it needs to pay your medical care providers.

It was never supposed to be this way. The Social Security system was created in 1935 as part of Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal to provide financial resources for retirees, disabled people, and orphans, paid for out of payroll taxes. (People sometimes think of Social Security as a savings vehicle, but it is in fact an insurance program, and people should not think in terms of getting out what they put in, because insurance doesn’t work that way.) A Social Security Number was never meant to be about anything more than Social Security. Given the growing bureaucratization of everyday life in the decades since, there was talk of creating a national ID system, but the strong civil libertarian and privacy strains in American culture and politics effectively blocked such plans. But all this ended up meaning is that Social Security Numbers became de facto national ID numbers, ones routinely used in the public and private sectors alike, essential for things like opening bank accounts and getting jobs.

And, as we’ve already discussed, health care. This month, your twin uncles turned 26, which under current law means they’re no longer covered under your grandmother’s and my medical insurance. Fortunately, they both have jobs that provide it (a story for another day is the many employers who don’t). Your older-by-15-minutes uncle recently started a new job, and so enrolled in his own plan at the start of the year. But on the advice of his union rep—and here I’ll say I’m delighted he works for a company that has one—your younger one waited until his actual 26th birthday, because our family plan is a very good one. The problem is that I’ve been on tenterhooks about the transition from one to the other. We filed the paperwork in late April, were told it was successfully processed, and that he would receive his new insurance card—with, of course, the essential set of digits that would unlock his benefits—in 1-2 weeks. When that didn’t happen, I girded my loins for the maze of the interactive computer system of the new insurance company to figure out why. And when I finally got through, what the real live human wanted to know was—you guessed it—your uncle’s Social Security Number. I recited it, and was told he wasn’t listed. As far as Blue Cross/Blue Shield Anthem is concerned, your dear uncle Ryland doesn’t exist. I circled back to his union (and here I will confess that I sometimes masquerade as your uncle because it’s just easier in wrangling with the machinery of modern life) and was told no, he wouldn’t exist yet, because the processing isn’t complete until later in the month. I’ve been afraid of him getting hit by the proverbial truck and falling between the health care system cracks, which might prove to be more financially than medically disastrous. But that’s a risk I’m just going to have to live with for now.

As I said, sweetheart, you aren’t losing any sleep over any of this. But this is the kind of thing that’s been keeping me up at night for years. (If it didn’t, something else would; I’m afraid that’s just the kind of guy I am.) But here’s my rather hefty consolation prize, one I was never really counting on until recently: I am now eligible for Social Security benefits. We’ll see how well it survives the current presidential administration, which has been shredding the apparatus that administers it.

A postscript: Leila’s Social Security card arrived the same day this letter was written.