Signing Up for CHIP in Pennsylvania
Two days after Erik Friedman was born, his parents applied for coverage under Pennsylvania’s universal Children’s Health Insurance Program. Six months later, they got it. What happened in between were 86 phone calls, two lost applications, a calculation error that tripled their income (and raised their premium), incorrect advice that they should (and did) drop their baby’s catastrophic health insurance to qualify, multiple promises of responses that never came, and collection agency letters for hospital bills, which, of course, hadn’t been paid. (More)
Very strange!
Why strange?
Strange that one family could suffer so many different problems in the course of signing up for SCHIP. They were by no means unintelligent people so it’s not likely that they made stupid plunders that contributed to their problems. I mean; two lost applications and 86 phone calls? Wow!
This is what we have in store.
I mean…6 months doesn’t sound horrible…
“At three months, with no luck by phone, fax, or e-mail, Friedman looked up a state Medicaid office in the city and bicycled over, hoping to see a supervisor. He found a demolished building.”
Apparently, information moves slowly in government.
“With the Affordable Care Act certain to substantially increase DPW’s workload and require major shifts in procedures by Jan. 1, Miller said the department was training staff on new IT systems and mandatory eligibility changes, and hiring new workers. She said a job fair will be held July 18 in Philadelphia to recruit more caseworkers.”
I hope additional staff helps, but after reading the article I’m not so sure.
I like the little ray of hope at the end,
“Little Erik Friedman’s insurance is in the process of being renewed. His parents think CHIP is great”
I find it fascinating that they are so ecstatic about such a bureaucratic mess.
The application process was the bureaucratic mess.
The CHIP program is administered by Independence Blue Cross, and they like CHIP program now that they have access.
That is horribly inefficient. If something would have happened to Erik in those six months his parents would have been out of luck.
Perhaps the government should hire a company to process applications for them. Seems like they’re not very efficient at it.