Big medical assistance cuts tied to paperwork backlogs
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Tracey Clark and her 5-year-old son, Alexander, in front of their home in Bethel Park.
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Last month, 31,741 Pennsylvanians were cut from Medical Assistance, the insurance that covers people who are disabled, poor or gravely ill. Almost 18,000 children lost their benefits.
The reduction is a point of pride for state Department of Public Welfare officials who are trying to cut the budget by clearing out ineligible recipients whose paperwork was not complete.
But workers and advocates say that in many cases the fault doesn't lie with the recipients but with the welfare department. Its stepped-up reviews of backlogged cases have combined with a shrinking staff, computer issues and an increase in applications for assistance because of the high unemployment rate to create a wave of terminations.
"Because of our rigorous program-integrity efforts to enforce current rules and regulations, the result of these reviews has been the closure of over 100,000 individuals from Medical Assistance," Tim Costa, executive deputy secretary of the Department of Public Welfare, testified Wednesday before the House Republican Policy Committee in Harrisburg.
The stepped-up review cut 19,619 people in July, the start of the state's new fiscal year that included heavy budget cuts, and another 15,337 in August, Mr. Costa said.
Anne Bale, a spokeswoman for the Department of Public Welfare, said the reviews of the backlog are being conducted because "we're required to follow the law."
One nonprofit that provides care for severely disabled people is seeing termination letters coming in now at a rate of five a week, when before this summer it rarely received five a year.
"These are people who are severely disabled. They are not going to get better, their situations are not going to change," said Lucy Spruill, the director for public policy at UCP/CLASS, a local affiliate of United Cerebral Palsy that provides attendant care for severely disabled clients.
First Published October 30, 2011 12:00 am
