UK - Taxpayers shelling out £800 a MINUTE in disability benefits to people claiming to suffer from 'anxiety' - as private firms cash in by coaching claimants

Taxpayers are shelling out £800 in disability benefits every minute to people claiming to suffer from anxiety, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The cost of Personal Independence Payments (PIP) for the disorder has rocketed from under £100million in 2019 to nearly £427million last year - under rules that allow anyone, regardless of their income, to collect the payments without ever seeing a doctor.

Instead, the benefit - worth up to £194 a week - can be awarded on nothing more than a personal diary or a letter from a friend describing how anxiety affects daily life.

The payments are not means-tested and there is no requirement to stop working to receive them. A full-time company director on a six-figure salary qualifies on exactly the same basis as anyone else.

Critics say the figures are the latest proof that Britain's benefits bill is out of control, with total PIP spending projected to rise from £26billion a year to £38billion within five years.

Keir Starmer was forced into a humiliating climbdown last year when he abandoned plans to rein in the soaring costs - pulling the proposal 90 minutes before a Commons vote after biggest rebellion of his premiership.

Ministers had wanted to tighten the rules so claimants had to prove they struggled significantly in at least one area of daily life, rather than qualifying by accumulating small difficulties across several.

Plan collapsed after 126 Labour MPs threatened to block it, with rebels arguing the changes would push disabled people into poverty.

PIP is assessed on points across 12 daily living and mobility activities, from washing and cooking to socialising and planning journeys. Needing prompting to socialise scores two points; being unable to manage it at all scores eight.

In early April I sent a version of this to the generic IG.
Now a specific person is named. So I sent this:

Seto J. Bagdoyan, Director, Forensic Audits and Investigative Service

Deloitte IES Integrated Eligibility System and its EMPI Enterprise Master Person Index is the single biggest welfare fraud.

1) Deloitte IES enrolls the poor for Medicaid, CHIP, SNAP, WIC, TANF, Sec8, LIHEAP, etc in 25 states... mostly the big states ... ME VT RI MA NY PA NJ FL GA TN KY OH IN MI IL AR LA TX NM CO WY MT ND OR CA..not MN.

2) Deloitte IES has known DEAD on welfare. Every state licenses Funeral Home Directors to be correct and accurate in reporting deaths. They promptly report deaths to LEGACY.COM ... and also to County gov a State gov which are not so prompt.
Weekend batch jobs (if not daily jobs) can know 80% of deaths as of that weekend, 90% after 2 weekends, 99.9% after 4 weekends. But Deloitte IES has been known to finally report deaths over 10 years after LEGACY.COM.

3) Deloitte IES has DUPs.. Sue Smith, Susan Smith, Susan Jones-Smith have the same DOB, SSN, address and are the same person. But Deloitte IES gives her 3 ID, 3 benefit plans. Every true Master Person Index has a way to point all the
DUPs to the one MASTER.

4) Deloitte EMPI of IES does not meet any definition of Master Person Index and is therefore FRAUD.

5) Deloitte IES has DIRTY ADDRESS data and makes no attempt to cleanse or standardize address. This is not standard or industry accepted practice.

6) Deloitte IES has DIRTY DEI data. There is no attempt to build a 3 tier table to handle Asian, E Asian, and Japanese, Korean, Chinese and address the DEI problem. But, since 1/3 of RACE is UNKNOWN (by several labels) the DEI data is statistically meaningless.
Deloitte IES might be better off to not try to collect DEI data.

7) Deloitte, Optum, Gainwell, other IT vendors, Health Insurance Companies, Providers are paid a CAPITATION for every “active” row in the database. This is FRAUD by Deloitte, WASTE by those who receive Deloitte data.

8) Deloitte and other IT vendor staff and Federal and State agency staff and staff of Health Insurance companies and providers WASTE much time and money trying to make sense of the Deloitte dirty data.

9) From small Quickie Mart to big chain of Medical Centers PROVIDERS yield to the temptation presented by Deloitte Dirty Data to commit FRAUD. If caught by the IG, which is rare, they refund the excess and consider it an interest-free loan.

10) Intentionally EVIL PROVIDERS seek out and exploit the cracks in the dirty data. If caught, much time and money is spent to investigate and prosecute them. Finally, the SHELL CORPORATION is found guilty and the EVIL often go free.

11) Deloitte IES was created due to the massive expansion and complexity of welfare in the Obama era. In 2013-14 the CIO of GA DCH Medicaid & Government Employee Health Insurance went to great lengths to try to get Deloitte IES to properly design and code IES and its EMPI. Deloitte fought against using “industry standards” in the bureaucratic SWAMP and did not fight based on facts, logic or law.

12) KFF News and others have reported the Deloitte fraud in Pathways and other Deloitte government contracts.

13) Deloitte contracts are with the state with approval by HHS/CMS.

14) Some money flowing thru the Feds and States is 90-10 money. Some is 70-30 money.

15) In the SWAMP we have both Alligators and Mosquitos. Deloitte is the Alligator. Somali Providers and Recipients are the mosquitos.

16) Gainwell, also a large IT vendor, is not perfect (in my experience). But its biggest WASTE FRAUD ABUSE is staff time and money in handling the garbage data it receives from Deloitte via the state agency. The same might be true for other IT vendors.

17) Deloitte is the biggest abuser of H1b. Many Deloitte H1b are not knowledgeable about US and GA law and customs. Some Deloitte H1b IT workers are not competent in IT. This might be a side issue to the main issue as the FRAUD did not originate with H1b.
—
Best Regards,
Bob Schmidt
GA DCH Medicaid & Gov Employee Health Ins consultant 2014-Jun-2025. Prior to that, Voter Registration Consultant to GA SOS.
475 Mt Vernon Hwy NE, Sandy Springs GA 30328.
phone: +1 (470) 827-7942
email: spintreebob2@gmail.com

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