Bonum Certa Men Certa

Understanding Thierry Breton: Atos Healthcare - “The Ugly Face of Business”



Overview





Understanding Thierry Breton



Further parts pending review and research




Atos comparing



Summary: "...2,380 people died after their claim for employment and support allowance (ESA) ended because a work capability assessment (WCA) found that they were found fit for work."

Atos Healthcare ended up at the centre of a major public controversy in the UK as a result of its provision of Work Capability Assessment (WCA) services for the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP).



The company became a lightning rod for public anger over the WCA scheme which was criticised by MPs and campaigners as inhumane.

Health assessments conducted by Atos were mired in controversy, including complaints over the qualifications of assessors, as well as the criteria used to determine fitness for work.

"In another case, a woman with stage 4 cancer, who was suffering from hair loss undergoing chemotherapy, was told she was also able to get a job, and had her benefits slashed."Thousands of vulnerable people were found to have been wrongly judged to be fit for work and ineligible for government support. In one case, a dying father, 34, diagnosed with emphysema was told that because he could "push an empty box" he was "fit for work". In another case, a woman with stage 4 cancer, who was suffering from hair loss undergoing chemotherapy, was told she was also able to get a job, and had her benefits slashed.

In 2013, Greg Wood, a former navy doctor decided that he could no longer tolerate working for the company and blew the whistle on practices within Atos after he was asked to change a report he had made on a claimant, in this case making it unlikely that the individual would be eligible for sickness benefit.

Wood left because he considered that the company was acting unethically by putting pressure on a doctor to change the conclusions of an assessment.

"Wood left because he considered that the company was acting unethically by putting pressure on a doctor to change the conclusions of an assessment."His decision to spill the beans made headlines in the UK because he was the first Atos-employed doctor to put his career on the line and articulate concerns about a system that had been criticised by charities and claimants for years.

Wood gave strong evidence to the BBC to suggest that the methods used to assess whether individuals were eligible for the new incapacity benefit - employment and support allowance (ESA) - were "unfair" and "skewed against the claimant".

The DWP’s own statistics revealed that in 2011 10,600 people died within six weeks of being found fit for work by Atos and another 2,200 died before their assessment was complete.

"The DWP’s own statistics revealed that in 2011 10,600 people died within six weeks of being found fit for work by Atos and another 2,200 died before their assessment was complete."It was reported that the Government had refused to publish statistics for 2012/2013 and had rejected a Freedom of Information request submitted by Mike Sivier of the Vox Political blog on the grounds that was ‘vexatious‘.

However, following a ruling by the Information Commissioner’s Office in April 2015, the DWP released statistics which revealed that, during the period December 2011 and February 2014, 2,380 people died after their claim for employment and support allowance (ESA) ended because a work capability assessment (WCA) found that they were found fit for work.

Atos protest
Dodgy health assessments by Atos led to widespread outrage and protests in the UK



In February 2014 it was reported that Atos was endeavouring to secure an early exit from its WCA contract, which was due to expire in August 2015.

Atos claimed that there had been about 163 incidents of abuse or assault on staff each month during the previous year and that it had found comments on social media accusing staff of being "murdering scumbags" who "won't be smiling when we come to hang you".

A month later the DWP confirmed that it had agreed to an early exit from the existing WCA contract after raising concerns about the quality of the work conducted by Atos.

"...2,380 people died after their claim for employment and support allowance (ESA) ended because a work capability assessment (WCA) found that they were found fit for work."However, as of October 2016 Atos was still undertaking work for the DWP in assessing Personal Independence Payment applications.

When Atos took over administering PIPs its estimates of how fast claims could be processed were over-optimistic as were estimates of how easily claimants could get to assessment centres. This led to delays in assessments, distress to claimants and unexpectedly high costs and to accusations that Atos had misled the government over its capabilities for processing claims.

In 2017 revelations that Atos and Capita were on target to be paid more than €£ 700m for their five-year PIP contracts, and significantly more than the original estimate of €£€ 512m, led to accusations that the DWP was "rewarding failure".

In December 2015, a report by the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee singled out Atos for its failure to show "an appropriate duty of care to the taxpayer" over an IT system designed to allow the extraction of data from all GP practice computer systems in England. The costs of the system, which started five years late, ballooned from an initially estimated €£€ 14m to a final total of €£ 40m.

"The costs of the system, which started five years late, ballooned from an initially estimated €£€ 14m to a final total of €£ 40m."As a result of this "IT cockup", the Public Accounts Committee urged the Cabinet Office to review Atos’s relationships as a Crown supplier, and to ensure the reasons for the project’s failure were "disseminated widely to reinforce the steps that need to be taken to avoid such mistakes being repeated again".

In December 2016, Liberal Democrat leader, Tim Farron questioned how Atos and Capita could have been paid over €£500m from tax payers money for assessing fitness to work in view of the fact that 61% who appealed won their appeals.

Farron stated, “This adds to the suspicion that these companies are just driven by a profit motive, and the incentive is to get the assessments done, but not necessarily to get the assessments right. They are the ugly face of business.”

OH Assist
If your reputation is in shreds, it may be time to rebrand…



By 2014, the Atos brand had become so toxic in the UK that Atos Healthcare "reinvented" itself as OH Assist. The Atos Healthcare brand was reserved for use in connection with activities relating to the PIP contract.

In 2016 it was announced that Atos had sold off the OH Assist business to CBPE Capital.

One positive outcome finally emerged from the Atos Healthcare saga in April 2017 when the Scottish government adopted legislation prohibiting the use of private firms for carrying out benefit assessments in Scotland.

"One positive outcome finally emerged from the Atos Healthcare saga in April 2017 when the Scottish government adopted legislation prohibiting the use of private firms for carrying out benefit assessments in Scotland."Social Security minister Jeane Freeman declared that profiteering companies had no place in assessing a person’s fitness to work:

"One of our fundamental principles is that profit should never be a motive nor play any part in assessing or making decisions on people’s health and eligibility for benefits."

In the next part we will return to Thierry Breton and explore some of his connections with the upper echelons of French plutocracy.

Recent Techrights' Posts

IBM Layoff Rumours, Large-Scale Implementations Weeks Ahead (in March 2025)
There are some people corroborating
Microsoft Blasted for Adding Insult to Injury: Workers Laid Off Without Prior Notice, Without Severance Payment and Basic Coverage (Like Health), Then Stigmatised as Bad Performers So They Cannot Find a Job Elsewhere
Such stereotypes end entire careers
BetaNews is Still Publishing LLM Slop/SPAM About "Linux"
Assuming it is indeed LLM slop, it seems clear BetaNews has no intention of improving or is simply unable/unwilling to improve
 
Links 11/02/2025: Current state of the Internet and Smallnet Information Services (SIS)
Links for the day
Conservative Estimate: Over 10,000 IBM Workers to Be Laid Off in the Next Two Waves
The morale is low and layoffs are expected soon, with mass layoffs likely happening next month and then again later
Links 11/02/2025: Trade Wars and "Crisis for American Universities"
Links for the day
Parasitic LLM Slop Sites Destroy the Ability to Find "Linux" News in Google News
Remember that Google News laid off lots of its workers
Richard Stallman's English Talk in Italy Less Than 24 Hours Away (Torino) and Then Another Talk in Italy Scheduled (University of Bozen-Bolzano)
He's active and he travels a lot in spite of his medical condition
Links 11/02/2025: Nutritional Poverty, Closure of USAID, More Fictional 'Valuations' Around Buzzwords
Links for the day
Perl Programming Leftovers
recently in perl.org
Microsoft in Africa: From 98% to Less Than 10% in Just 16 Years
Microsoft being on less than 1 in 10 Web-connected devices in Africa is a very big deal
Almost as If MElon Reads Techrights
The joke we started appears to be spreading
Gemini Links 11/02/2025: NeoVim and Deploying Other People's Code
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, February 10, 2025
IRC logs for Monday, February 10, 2025
Scheduled Maintenance Tomorrow and on Valentines
If the site (or Gemini capsule) is offline for a bit, the maintenance windows are likely the root cause
If Matthias Kirschner Loves Free Software, He'll Change the Name of the Microsoft-Sponsored Organisation He Governs (in Order to Avoid Confusion)
The FSF-EEE does not really like Software Freedom, it just loves money (including Microsoft's)
Soylent News Lessens the Scope of Discussion Due to Persistent Trolling and Online Abuse
if they make it a lot harder for new people to participate, then they limit the "general appeal" and reach
EPO's Local Occupational Health, Safety and Ergonomics Committee (LOHSEC) in The Hague: Workers Are Getting Sicker, Conditions in Which to Assess Patent Applications Deteriorate
"According to the Office statistics the total number of days of absence has gone up from 12.4 to 13.1 total number of sick days per Full Time Equivalent (FTE) from 2023 to 2024."
The Standard Needs to Improve Its Standards for Fact-Checking, Aaron Swartz Had Nothing to Do With Reddit and He Detested the Company That Created It
The Web is already bad enough as it is
When the Livestream of Richard Stallman is Apparently Bury-Brigaded Offline You Finally Learn to Avoid Google/YouTube for Streaming
Please, people, stop uploading to Google/YouTube
New Paper From the EPO Highlights Large-Scale Discrimination at the Office, Where People Are Rewarded for Granting More and More Illegal Patents
Even the Kremlin is probably more competent than this
Links 10/02/2025: Ban on D.E.I. Language, Listeria Risk/Outbreak
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Announcing "Stringless" and Mental Health Improvement
Links for the day
Links 10/02/2025: Facebook Mass Layoffs, "Meta" Did What Aaron Swartz Had Done But to the Tune of 81.7 Terabytes
Links for the day
Microsoft Tarnishing the Brand of Arch
Of course Arch can do whatever it wants, but being associated with Microsoft is a badge of shame
The Ultimate and Inevitable Fall of OpenAI (Even Brave is 'Bigger' Now)
"When you advertise at the Super Bowl, you’ve reached just about every consumer in America. It’s the last stop. If you’re not profitable yet, you never will be."
Adding Slop to Your Blog Only Makes One Assume All the Text is LLM Slop
Simon Coter from Oracle has turned to slop
Macao is Leaving Microsoft Behind
Windows is falling to new all-time lows
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, February 09, 2025
IRC logs for Sunday, February 09, 2025
Microsoft's WSL (LSW) Shows That It Can Never Love Linux, Only Windows
that's just how Microsoft rolls
Activism in Times of War and a Coup
'Linux' Foundation works for fascism
What the Silencing of Neatnik Tells Us About Linus Torvalds Inside a Microsoft-Dominated 'Linux' Foundation
Is Linus Torvalds free to express his mind as he wishes about every topic, even just any technical topic?
Windows Down to 11.35% in Senegal, as Measured by statCounter
Another all-time low (Windows was at 99% in 2009)
"Latest Technology News" in BetaNews is LLM Slop Promoting OOXML and Proprietary Software at the Expense of LibreOffice and OpenDocument Format (ODF)
Remember that "open-source" and Open Source aren't the same; the former is fake
Links 09/02/2025: Coffee, Toxic Productivity, and Programming
Links for the day
Debian's Human Rights violations & Swiss women Nazi symbolism
Reprinted with permission from Daniel Pocock
Links 09/02/2025: Software Patents on MP3 and Another Scam Dressed Up as "Crypto"
Links for the day
Links 09/02/2025: Russian Energy Cut Off, LLM Pushers Show Signs of Desperation
Links for the day
Richard Stallman (RMS) Does Not Have Media Companies and Lobbyists on His Side, But His Message Spreads Regardless
The message of RMS is spreading in spite of all the smears
GNU/Linux Rises to All-Time High in Chile
sharp rise for GNU/Linux in Chile
Links 09/02/2025: Hottest January on Record, Panama Blackmailed
Links for the day
Why We Still Love Gemini Protocol
Gemini Protocol may seem like something "old" (it's actually very new) and something "nobody would use", but many people use it
Gemini Links 09/02/2025: "Died as a Mineral" and Game Interface for a Non-Game
Links for the day
Over at Tux Machines...
GNU/Linux news for the past day
IRC Proceedings: Saturday, February 08, 2025
IRC logs for Saturday, February 08, 2025