- Medicaid problems swell in new system, By Angela Mapes Turner, July 12, 2009, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette: “Indiana’s nearly 2-year-old experiment with a privatized welfare system appears to be failing. The backlog of pending Medicaid applications has ballooned in counties where welfare is handled by private contractors. From May 2008 – after the most recent wave of counties joined the new system – to December 2008, pending cases increased 86 percent. In counties working under the old system, the backlog increased only 16 percent, according to a Journal Gazette analysis of state data…”
- No Plan B for welfare contractors, By Ken Kusmer (AP), July 12, 2009, Indianapolis Star: “Indiana welfare officials considering canceling the state’s privately run welfare system have no backup plan in place, and critics say it will be hard to undo the privatization of 1,500 state case workers more than two years ago…”
- State prods contractor into action, By Eric Bradner, Evansville Courier and Press: “Gov. Mitch Daniels’ administration is using a carrot-and-stick strategy to try to pressure contractors hired to modernize the state’s welfare agency into producing better results…”
- The welfare privatization debacle, Editorial, July 12, 2009, Fort Wayne Journal Gazette: “Gov. Mitch Daniels likes to say that he inherited ‘the worst welfare system in the nation.’ But two extensive reviews of data by The Journal Gazette suggest it has grown worse under his watch. The latest shows staggering increases in Medicaid application backlogs in the counties where the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration turned eligibility processing over to IBM Corp…”
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty