Paper chase: Medicaid recipients must not suffer due to red tape
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It's one thing for the state Department of Public Welfare to be vigilant and make sure those who receive aid are eligible. It's another to become a slave to red tape.
Recent episodes suggest that too much of the latter has occurred as Pennsylvania steps up case reviews.
In September, the department removed 31,741 people from Medical Assistance, the insurance that covers the disabled, poor or gravely ill. Almost 18,000 of them were children. This year, DPW has cut off more than 100,000 from the program, which serves nearly 2 million residents.
The head of a local affiliate of United Cerebral Palsy that provides care for severely disabled clients told reporter Ann Belser it has been seeing five termination letters a week. Before this summer it rarely saw five a year.
A Bethel Park nurse whose 5-year-old son has leukemia was careful to update the forms so he could receive assistance, filling them out in March and again in June, after she was told the paperwork was missing. She still got a termination letter in August that said the papers were not on file.
A caseworker who also is a union officer in Allegheny County's Strip District assistance office said the problem has developed in the last few months, as workers were told to deal with backlogged cases. The Corbett administration's efforts to crack down on abuse are not solely to blame; staffing levels, reduced under former Gov. Ed Rendell, and a new computer system made it more difficult to get paperwork properly completed on time.
DPW is an enormous department that performs complicated, expensive and important work. Yet officials must never forget that their decisions have real consequences for needy Pennsylvanians who may be too ill or impaired to preserve their benefits on their own. The department must make sure its caseworkers have the resources they need to do a thorough job that doesn't endanger the health of their clients.
First Published November 2, 2011 12:00 am
