>That's awful!
>Arggh!  Have you heard of the family opportunity act?  That would, if passed,
>make it possible to buy-in to Medicaid for families with kwd.
>
>I'm just saying that maybe you should get behind this bill, it might help.
>
>Mag

When the Grassley-Kennedy Family Opportunity Act (which would allow
families with hurt kids to buy into Medicaid coverage) was introduced in
the senate, William Scanlon from the GAO was asked by the Senate Budget
Committee to testify as to just what benefits disabled children have under
Medicaid [Download from
http://www.senate.gov/~budget/democratic/testimony/gao_fao.pdf ]

In his testimony, he stated, "Among other requirements, EPSDT mandates that
states cover any service or item that is medically necessary to correct or
ameliorate a child's condition, regardless of whether the service or item
is otherwise covered under a state Medicaid program."--which is inaccurate,
and I called him [(202) 512-7114] and spoke to him about it, then discussed
it, then argued, then fought about it.

I wanted him to revise his testimony in order to accurately reflect the
language of the law. He has refused, and so I sent him information about a
Virginia child who was immobile and tube-fed but received 200+ treatments
of HBOT through Virginia Medicaid and now that child is sitting up, feeding
himself, and walking with some assistance--all because Virginia acted on
the actual language of Paragraph 5.

Now he doesn't know what to do.

There's a corollary to this situation. Right now Medicaid services for hurt
kids (Speech, OT, and PT) are being delivered through the school systems.
However, for every $2 in services rendered, on average, the feds are
reimbursing an additional $7 to cover administrative costs.

A report on this can be downloaded from
http://www.gao.gov/new.items/h600069.pdf.

Here you'll see that in Michigan alone $224,167,000 is claimed in
reimbursable administrative costs for administrating EPSDT services in
schools. The actual services rendered were barely $35,000,000.

Brain-injured children are moneymakers for the states.

However, if they fixed the problem, i.e., repair the brain-injury, these
children would no longer be sources of revenue. So, they deny HBOT and
continue to pull in federal money.

Democrats are rats.










"I have sworn upon the altar of God, eternal hostility against every form
of tyranny over the mind of man." --Thomas Jefferson, an early advocate of
Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy.
----------------------------
David Freels
2948 Windfield Circle
Tucker, GA 30084-6714
USA
770/491-6776 (phone and fax)
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