Death By Cuts

A Denver mother, whose son died in 2009 after pharmacists wrongly insisted he was ineligible for Medicaid, has filed a lawsuit against the city and Denver County Human Services.

The mother, Zuton Lucero-Mills, was turned away by a Walgreen’s pharmacy while seeking a refill on her son’s prescription in March 2009. Pharmacists said he was listed as ineligible for drug coverage in the Colorado Benefits Management System, a statewide database of medical and food assistance recipients managed through county human services offices.
~ from Colorado Mother Sues Over Son’s Death After Medicaid Denial by Naomi Spencer ~

There was one glaring problem: the child wasn't ineligible at all. No, the problem was caused by human error, a computer glitch or some combination of the two.

Lucero-Mills badgered the local office of the state agency to remedy the problem. Call after call went unanswered. The few times she actually was able to talk to someone in authority, she was assured the problem would be fixed, but it never was. Without the medication needed to manage his asthma, her nine year old boy never had the chance to see his 10th birthday.

Buried deep within this news article is what I believe is the primary smoking gun.

The delays and bureaucratic hurdles have been exacerbated by a huge rise in need since the onset of the economic crisis, with social workers overwhelmed by hundreds of additional cases, and departmental funding stretched.

While the notion of "shrinking government" may have a nice ring to it in a theoretical sense, in practice, it leads to real life frustration, missed opportunity and death. As cut after cut is made to social service agencies across the country, too few workers are being called on to handle ever-increasing caseloads.

Back in the 1980s, I worked for state agencies that provide Children's Services (child abuse investigation, Medicaid, foster homes, prevention programs, etc.). At each office I worked at, my caseload exceeded the established number per worker. At my last stop, as my county's sole child abuse investigator, I was handed a caseload that should have been handled by 3 workers, not one!

In this day of shrinking federal dollars, I can only imagine the caseload problem has grown far worse. When workers are inundated with cases, stupid mistakes are bound to occur. (I know I certainly made my share of them in the 80s!) Couple this with continuing regulation changes that cover several volumes and constant training to reeducate workers about these changing rules and it leaves even less time to keep up with the mountains of paperwork.

Shrinking government means that the few workers left to do the job are handcuffed from doing an EFFECTIVE job. It doesn't matter if we are talking about social workers, eligibility specialists, or railroad track inspectors. What we end up with are beleaguered public servants who skim the top of their duties and don't have the time nor energy to do those jobs well.

When public workers are unable to provide effective services, it often means nothing more than annoyance and frustration for the people they serve. In far too many cases, however, as in the case of this nine year old boy, it means a degraded standard of living and death.

Is this the best we can do?