Just like any business, if they make mistake, they lose money. The idea of having them foot the bill on their own mistakes is to make sure they don't repeat the same stupid mistakes rather than drop at innocent that have NOTHING to do with BS and forcing them to pay.
And the idea of SSN is entirely separate and have nothing to do with this. Government didn't make mistake with SSN, while creditors took advantage without actually paying for it, thus making taxpayer pay for it which is NOT right. And are we the creditors? Hell no! These creditors are there to collect profits, thus they should be the one to pay for the fees and cost to protect their assets not you nor government.
Please put your own foot in this poor guy's shoe, would you be willing to pay thousands dollars on medical bills that you did NOTHING wrong, and got NOTHING to hide, is this justifiable? I don't think so!
Another example, what if these narcs thought you have dope filled in your home, decided to get search warrant, and came to your place knocking everything down and destroyed thousands dollars of your properties only to find out there is not a dust of dope in your place, would you be gladly to foot the bill for Narc's mistake? Or should Narcs pay for this stupid mistake? And Narc eventually found out it was your next door neighbor, what a major oops, yet your paying for their oops... acceptable to you?