A Montbello mother says her 9-year-old son's death from severe asthma could have been prevented had Denver Human Services resolved problems with his Medicaid pharmacy benefits.
Advocacy lawyers who met Wednesday with the Colorado Attorney General's Office hold up Lucero's story as an example of how serious the problems are with the state's $243 million computer system that is supposed to manage benefits — and the county human workers behind it.
"The human system fell down," said Ed Kahn, a lawyer with the Colorado Center for Law and Policy, who is among a group of local and national lawyers weighing a lawsuit against the state for delays in getting food stamps and Medicaid benefits to people. "They are responsible for this kid's death."
The Colorado Benefits Management System is run through county human services offices and manages medical and food-assistance benefits for everyone in Colorado. Since its 2004 installation, the system has been beset by problems.
Last March, Lucero went to fill her son's prescriptions at a Walgreens near her home in Montbello. A worker there said Zumante didn't have prescription-drug coverage anymore.
Lucero says she called Denver Human Services every three days for four months trying to get him drug coverage. Each time she called, an automatic computer report was issued and sent to her house usually showing that all of her children — including Zumante — qualified for Medicaid.
But even when she brought in the reports to Walgreens, she was told the computer system showed he wasn't eligible for pharmaceutical benefits.
Throughout months of frustrating phone calls to Human Services' call-center operators, which often left Lucero in tears, Zumante's health weakened. She managed to reach her caseworker only once. The caseworker told her in March that the problem had been resolved.
And this, liberals say, is the reason why we need to give the government total control over the health care system. Yes, if we pass universal healthcare now we can ensure that every man, woman and child is forced to wade through the same bog of bureaucracy that Mrs. Lucero did, thereby bringing equality to all.
Denver Human Services says that Zemante Lucero's medication was covered under Medicaid. The problem wasn't that he didn't have healthcare. The problem was that Zemate didn't receive his government provided benefits due to an all too common breakdown in the bureaucracy!
So lets get this straight, a bureaucratic nightmare of a healthcare system failed to provide intended, needed and available benefits to a dying child because a bureaucrat somewhere in the system failed to enter the word "approved" into the computer. I think I've heard of this type of system somewhere before ... Can you say, "death panel?" If Zemate was 75 years old liberals might be able to tout that their utopian government healthcare system worked as intended but he was only 9 years old. The system failed, but if we force everyone into this system it will be different, dumping 350 million people into the mix will fix it right? The democrats in this country continue to find new ways to refine the definition of Orwellian. You should read the absolutely insane comments pro-obamacare leftists have left under each of these stories!
