Inquirer Editorial: Medicaid needs a timeout

State Department of Public Welfare officials have been doing a bang-up job lately.

But that's only if their marching orders have been changed from helping the neediest Pennsylvanians to letting thousands drop through gaping holes in the social safety net.

With a mandate from Gov. Corbett and budget-conscious lawmakers to help squeeze $470 million in savings from the state's $10.6 billion in welfare spending, it's probably no surprise that the main focus of welfare officials has been on how they can trim the ranks of those who receive aid.

In that vein, a top aide to welfare chief Gary D. Alexander recently pointed with apparent pride at the fact that more than 113,000 people had been purged from the rolls of Medicaid, the government-funded health insurance program that serves some 2.2 million poor, elderly, and disabled residents.

The aide told state legislators that DPW staffers had achieved this feat, which saved taxpayers $34 million, through stepped-up reviews of Medicaid recipients' eligibility, then terminating coverage for those who no longer qualified. About 4,000 had died, while others had moved out of state.

Of course, it would be great if the vast majority of reviews determined that so many people - including 20,000-plus children - had boot-strapped themselves into the middle-class. However, social-service advocates tell a different, more plausible story:

They say depleted welfare staffs simply haven't kept up with paperwork and a balky computer system, resulting in thousands of cutoffs for people who, rightfully, shouldn't have been cut.

Corbett officials won't acknowledge any such problems, even though the welfare workers' union confirms that DPW staffers are swamped. Rather, they insist the thinning of Medicaid rolls stems from "rigorous program-integrity efforts." Last week, Alexander trumpeted a new office to target proverbial waste, fraud, and abuse.

Yet, if the advocates are right that most children cut from Medicaid will eventually restore their coverage, the Corbett budget-cutting strategy is a cruel gambit for those kids and families trying to meet their medical needs in the interim. It would be far better to enact a moratorium on terminating children's coverage until the DPW's paperwork backlog is cleared completely.

In the state that pioneered the children's health insurance program (CHIP) concept, it's just wrong to risk hurting deserving youngsters through a single-minded focus on the bottom line.