88,000 children cut from Pa. medical assistance in last 6 months - war on the poor continues

[JPZenger]

http://www.philly.com/philly/health/20120117_Since_August__88_000_Pennsylvania_children_have_lost_Medicaid_benefits.html?cmpid=124488469

The Republican controlled PA. legislature gave the Secretary of Public Welfare legal authority to do anything he could to cut costs, without needing additional state approvals. As a result, PA. will soon cut off food stamps to any household with more than $2,000 of assets (other than a house and some cars), and has been using a bureaucratic to kick people off medical assistance, as described in the linked article.

Excerpts:

"Advocates for the poor and disabled say orders to quickly process a backlog of eligibility reviews, which has mushroomed to more than 700,000 cases, have pushed an already overwhelmed workforce over the edge. Many cuts that legal-services and social workers challenged turned out to involve paperwork that they say DPW lost - sometimes repeatedly, even when clients had receipts - or that had never been sent in the first place.

The official numbers don't count an additional 23,000 children whose benefits were cut and eventually restored retroactively, often with legal help. But poorer people may be less likely to call a lawyer, and child advocates believe thousands have no idea they are now uninsured. DPW reported data for adults as well, but it used a new method that makes comparisons with previous monthly numbers unclear.

Advocacy groups and the caseworkers' union say years of staff cuts in DPW's County Assistance Offices, combined with a recession-driven increase in cases, caused work to pile up. Attacking what was first thought to be a smaller backlog on what was originally a five-week deadline added another layer of dysfunction; handling disaster aid after summer floods was yet another...

About 62 percent were closed for "failure to provide information" or "failure to respond." "It tells me there is something wrong with the process they are using," said Richard Weishaupt, senior attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia. That nearly two-thirds of people who depended on Medicaid "have suddenly become so disorganized they can't send in their paperwork on time . . . just defies imagination," Weishaupt said."