Drowned in Red Tape
May 3rd, 2007 at 11:54 pm
Ah, that wonderful Accenture contract — it’s the gift that keeps on giving. (Unless you want to enroll in a benefit program, then it’s un-for-giving. Bada-bing.). Pardon the dark humor, but today’s news that more than 17,000 kids fell off the Children’s Health Insurance Program last month has us in a sardonic mood. Apparently, we have thatAccenture-call center deal to thank, at least in part, for the falloff.
First the details: In the past month, the program shrunk by 5 percent overall — 14 percent of the kids on CHIP in April were booted off (new kids entering the program helped limit the overall decline to 5 percent). It’s the largest monthly enrollment drop in the seven-year history of the the program. There are 305, 991 kids now enrolled in CHIP, according toHHSC — the all-time high was more than 520,000 back in 2003, before the Lege sliced and diced it. For the wonks out there, you can check out the monthly CHIP enrollment history here.
HHSC blamed the unusually large drop on a bureaucratic snafu or “red tape.” Apparently, HHSC granted some families automatically renewing CHIP eligibility last year — a reaction to the disastrous experiment with using Accenture-run call centers for screening and enrollment. To help ease the crisis, the agency dispensed a get-out-of-call-center-jail-free card. Many of those recently expired,HHSC said, which resulted in many more kids losing CHIP coverage.
Some folks don’t think that’s the whole story. Some advocates wonder if the lasting damage that the Accenture fiasco inflicted on the enrollment system might have caused the drop in CHIP. Are families having trouble again signing up for CHIP? The Center for Public Policy Priorities noted in a statement that a huge number of kids were denied CHIP coverage last month. “It is critical that the legislature act to address delays in coverage,understaffing and processing errors in both CHIP and Medicaid,” said CPPP’s Anne Dunkelberg. She called on the Senate to pass HB 109, Rep. Sylvester Turner’s bill that partially restores cuts to CHIP. It has hit a wall in the Senate.
Texas has the highest percentage of uninsured children in the nation. Yet we continually find new, creative ways to kick kids off CHIP.
May 4th, 2007 at 7:39 pm
[…] as news of the unprecedented drop in CHIP enrollment came out yesterday, several women who know more than a thing or two about the […]