Shameless Corruption
by digby
Here’s a little taste of what your average senior will have to deal with when she’s on Ryan’s “voucher” program or when the whole Medicare system is privatized.
Reporting from Indianapolis— 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.
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.
“I thought the news was going to kill my mother, she was so upset,” said Cohoon, 63. Her mother had to get by on support from cash-strapped relatives for months until the state restored her benefits under pressure from Legal Services attorneys.
That’s brought to you from the people who say “government can’t do anything right.”
So how did this happen, you ask? Well … it’s good old-fashioned corruption, all dressed up in a fancy new name called “privatization.”
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.
[…]
It’s an issue that is likely to persist, as Republicans in statehouses nationwide turn to private companies as they seek to shrink government and weaken the hold of public-sector unions. One of the main proponents has been Daniels, who privatized a prison and a major toll road and sought unsuccessfully to lease out the state lottery, cultivating a reputation for fiscal discipline that led major party figures to urge him to run for president in 2012. He recently declined, but retains considerable influence in his party.
[…]
Critics say that in Indiana, the privatization process barreled forward with little public input and was marred by the appearance of conflicts of interest. Despite the massive nature of the changes he was proposing, Daniels insisted he did not need legislative approval. And the only public hearing occurred after he announced he would proceed with the project.
Key players involved in the process had ties to Affiliated Computer Services, the company that benefited the most from the deal. Mitch Roob — a Daniels appointee who ran the state’s Family and Social Services Administration when it awarded the contract — was a former ACS vice president. As the state began the project, Roob occasionally sought advice from former Indianapolis Mayor Stephen Goldsmith, a political ally of Daniels and fellow privatization advocate who also had been an ACS vice president.
And any attempts to rein in such boondoggles will inevitably be attacked as “regulations.”
You have to read the whole article to understand just how corrupt these processes are. And for all the talk about local control and smaller bureaucracies, the companies they are contracting with are national and their size is huge.And a bunch of people are getting rich off these tax dollars while the people the programs are designed to serve are getting the shaft.
This is quite a story — and it’s about one of the GOP’s biggest stars, the guy who broke the Village’s heart when he decided against a run for president.
h/t to ms
.