Texas Privitization Of Human Service Functions Now A National Case Study In Incompetence

As the battle continues to rage across the nation between Republicans who want to encourage privatization of states’ intake programs for Food Stamps and Democrats who want to preserve the program’s accountability and integrity, Texas is once again in the spotlight. And, as usual, it’s for nothing good.

Texas’ disaster with Accenture and the privatization of Health and Human Services intake programs is center stage as a case study at a new website, Need Over Greed. Here is some of what they had to say about the Texas debacle:

In 2005, four Texas counties signed a contract worth $899 million with Accenture, a Bermuda-based company, to outsource Food Stamp and Medicaid eligibility jobs to call center operators.

The results were disastrous. Experienced public employees were terminated and replaced with poorly trained, low-paid call center operators. Thousands of phone calls went unanswered. Even worse, 127,000 needy children were dropped from the health care roles between December 2005 and April 2006.

One child, a 13-year old boy from Houston with advanced kidney cancer, went four months without insurance and had to wait until bureaucratic mix-ups were straightened out before starting necessary treatments.

After an audit of the privatization scheme, former Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Strayhorn, a Republican, stated that “the project has failed the state and the citizens it was designed to serve” and called the privatization effort a “perfect story of wasted tax dollars, reduced access to services and profiteering at taxpayers’ expense.”

The Accenture contract was cancelled. And now those who experienced the Texas disaster are warning others – particularly Indiana taxpayers – of the dangers of privatization.

Of course, all this arises within the context of a much bigger issue than Texas, and one that’s intertwined within the Farm Bill and across America:

In July 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives voted for language in the Farm Bill that prevents the Administration from allowing states to bypass the existing prohibition that prevents companies from taking over the process of deciding who is eligible for Food Stamps. Now the Senate must act.The Food Stamp program has its origins in the 1940s, as many American families struggled to put food on the table due to harsh economic conditions. Enacted into law in the 1960s, the modern Food Stamp program now enables as many as 26 million Americans each month to afford the nutritious food they need for good health.

To guard against corruption, federal law required that only qualified, merit-based civil service employees would determine who was eligible for Food Stamps. But in the mid-1990s, major corporations began lobbying for huge state contracts to take over most of the eligibility determination process for Food Stamp, Medicaid and other public welfare programs.

These efforts failed miserably in Texas. And despite the Texas disaster, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels seems determined to force his State down the same road. So to protect accountability and the integrity of the Food Stamp program, a coalition of anti-poverty, anti-hunger, women’s children’s and labor groups created the Campaign to Protect Children’s Nutrition.

The campaign won a provision in the 2007 Farm Bill that bars the administration from allowing states to auction off nutrition for needy Americans to corporations. The House approved the language in August and the Senate will act soon. But big corporations are now doing all they can to strip the Farm Bill of the anti-privatization provisions.

Remember all of the Hell we had in Texas with Accenture and private contractors? Well, that could become a reality in other states, too.

Perhaps it is a good time for a trip down memory lane to remind ourselves just how terrible private contracting of HHS services has been in Texas:

Here are some of Capitol Annex’s posts on the subject:

Bad Subcontractor To Blame For Declining CHIP Enrollment?

What Went Wrong With The HHS Call Centers

More Accenture?

‘Permanent Wall’ Keeps Kids From CHIP Program (our personal favorite)

And here is the entire archive for the “HHS Boondoggle” category where most of our CHIP coverage resides.

Also, I’ll direct you to some CHIP coverage from the Dean of the Texas Blogosphere, Charles Kuffner, who has done an excellent job covering this issue from day one:

Those Who Do Not Learn From History Are Doomed To Hire Accenture Again

Strayhorn Releases Audit of Accenture

Fire Accenture!

We’re Stuck With Accenture

The CHIP Endgame

Know Your HHSC Contractors

State Finally Cuts Bait On Accenture

Accenture May Be Gone, But Privatization Lingers

Technorati Tags Accenture, Need Over Greed

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