Bryan Corbin, writing for the Evansville Courier Press, has a story on complaints about the Governor’s welfare eligibility “modernization” program. The Governor “modernized” the eligibility process for people seeking Medicaid, food stamps, and the like by turning the program over to a group of vendors led by IBM.
The result has been frequent complaints that the system loses clients’ documents, causes long delays, furnishes incorrect information and is hard for the elderly and disabled to navigate.
Permit me to skeptically suspect that, to the Daniels administration, this is a feature, not a bug. It’s an old insurance trick to limit claims by using a cumbersome bureaucracy to screw those otherwise eligible for benefits.
In the 2009 session that starts Jan. 7, state Rep. Suzanne Crouch of Evansville, may introduce a bill that temporarily would halt the FSSA from rolling out the modernization program to the 33 counties it has yet to reach.
“This bill does not attempt to tell the administration what to do, it does not attempt to do anything other than hold them accountable for what they’ve undertaken,” Crouch, a Republican, said.
Accountability? I thought that was for the little people.
Corbin’s article goes into a lot more detail and captures some of the back and forth between Daniels and the lawmakers who propose to hold him accountable for his decisions. Well worth a read.
Fairly similar tactics have been used to ‘administer’ unemployment services:
Elkhart County’s unemployed angered with state
Chicago Tribune, United States – Dec 26, 2008
Similar things are going on with HIP (the Healthy Indiana Plan) that is supposed to provide health insurance to the uninsured. Applications are lost or “incomplete.” People are not supposed to call to check on the status of their applications, but must wait 45 business days or longer to receive a written response, which usually asks for more information. Once someone is approved, he or she may find it difficult to find a health care provider who accepts HIP patients or may find out that their HIP health insurance provider will deny claims.
I agree with you, Doug, that these problems are intended, but of course, Daniels et al would never admit as much.
Quotes from Gov. Daniels:
In reference to Republican legislators calling for accountability:
“Let me just say, they’d better come here first (to the governor’s office) because we are not turning around on this very important reform,” Daniels said Dec. 19.
Sounds as if he is willing to work with others–NOT!
Regarding the citizens making complaints:
“Let me tell you what: They (the legislators) are hearing complaints from people who made money off the past system. That’s where the complaints are principally coming from. It wasn’t a bad system; it was the worst in America,” Daniels said.
How he would know that, I have no idea.