Louise Cohoon was at home when her 80-year-old mother called in a panic from Terre Haute: The $97 monthly Medicaid payment she relied on to supplement her $600-a-month income had been cut without warning by a private company that had taken over the state's welfare system.There is more, read the whole article.
Later, the state explained why: She failed to call into an eligibility hot line on a day in 2008 when she was hospitalized for congestive heart failure.
...
Cohoon's mother, now suffering from Alzheimer's disease, was one of thousands of Indiana residents who abruptly and erroneously lost their welfare, Medicaid or food stamp benefits after Republican Gov. Mitch Daniels privatized the state's public assistance program — the result of an efficiency plan that went awry from the very beginning, the state now admits.
Though the $1.37-billion project proved disastrous for many of the state's poor, elderly and disabled, it was a financial bonanza for a handful of firms with ties to Daniels and his political allies, which landed state contracts worth millions.
The disparate effects underscore the risks of handing control over public services to the private sector. Whether the approach will ultimately improve services and save money remains a matter of fierce debate in Indiana. But the state's experience shows that without adequate safeguards, privatization can compound the very problems it is designed to correct: bureaucratic burdens, perceptions of influence-peddling and a lack of competition.
Obviously Louise Cohoon, nor her now Alzheimer-suffering mother, understand the urgency for providing yet more tax cuts for billionaires and millionaires so that they will "kick start" the economy for the umpteenth time, a promise that keeps being repeated by the political right as they give away more and more wealth to the ultra-rich while whittling away at what little the bottom 90% get from government.
It is funny how the LA Times doesn't understand that handing over government programs to "entrepreneurs" is exactly what has "kick-started" the strong economic recovery which Americans can see all around them. Just look at those foreclosed homes, the laid off public service workers, etc. These are all signs of a super-charged economy leaping ahead providing millions of jobs and giving people mind-boggling salary increases as wealth flows from "trickle-down" economics.
It is typical that the "little people" simply don't understand the logic of helping the ultra-rich to get even richer so that they will let crumbs fall from their table. Obviously the "little people" have little brains and don't understand the sage wisdom of Republican economic policy. And they are a-historical. They can't look back and realize that Republican presidents delivered the bacon by making the "little people" phenomenally wealthy while cutting the public debt. Everybody knows that the Clinton years were the years of desperation where unemployment ran out of control, wages fell, and the federal government built up trillions in debt. It was only with Reagan and the two Bushes that the economy soared, people were so wealthy they bought 2 and 3 houses, and the federal debt simply disappeared like a puddle on hot pavement in the midst of a summer day. Right? What? Don't bother me with facts. I know my right wing ideology, and it tells me all the previous is true. I can't be bothered if historians claim the opposite. They are obviously the stooges of the liberal elites who are running the country into the ground, unlike the Republicans who have made the US wealthier, more powerful, more industrialized, better educated, and surfeited with budget surpluses "as far as the eye can see"!
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