From my experience, it seems the fraud paranoia actually trends towards increasing the relative fraud rate. The layers of bullshit serve to trip up and exclude those the programs are meant to serve but don’t bother the fraudsters at all. Layers of bureaucracy don’t hurt people who are willing to just lie - it’s like why dishonest witnesses are often more compelling. It’s much easier to tell an internally consistent story when it’s all fabricated.

Of course; I’m sure that, if it were easy enough, people would commit social security fraud.

I know this is a subjective statement, but as I go through this process it just feels way, way, way over the top.

We could probably do with a lot less. We could probably make the process kinder. The experience is so humiliating and we do it to people who are already suffering.

Edit: Imagine, hypothetically, that the process were twice as kind but bumped the fraud rate to 1.5%. I would be totally OK with that. Maybe it’s worth spending a little extra public money to treat people with dignity.

I apologize; it was a little glib. I'm sure that the way it works isn't Pareto optimal; and there is clearly a problem in the U.S. of using shaming as a tool to discourage consumption of means-tested benefits, as opposed to focusing on actual good governance.

I wish you the best of luck.

No worries! You’re not out of line for being concerned about this stuff.

It’s like a lot of policy stuff: our congress critters have a very black-and-white approach to a problem that only comes in shades of gray.

And, thank you. I have a good support system these days and I think everything will eventually be OK. There’s just an unspecified amount of stupid stuff between here and there. :-)

Once a little fraud is possible an industry is set up to exploit it until it becomes dominated by fraud.

It would be possible to change policies slightly and observe the results. The slope toward vastly less punitive benefits regimes might be slippery...

That would explain the opposite situation when it comes to tax avoidance schemes.

Yes; in fact, there's excellent evidence from the IRS that the level of misreporting on tax returns increases with the opacity and difficulty of verification of income source. There's hardly any fraud for W-2 employees, and relatively large amounts of it for passthrough businesses like partnership and S-corps.

That’s something we could calculate, so any discussion about it is a deflection.