When a giant health care company wanted to save money, a foster baby paid the price.
e was born three months too early, unable to breathe or eat on his own. But after a year of intense care in a foster home in Mesquite, D’ashon Morris had grown into a bright-eyed toddler who loved to cuddle and crawl.
He was still very sick. But he was giggling, babbling, grabbing for toys. Doctors described him as “happy and playful” and told his foster mother he would be healthy by the time he went to kindergarten.
That was before a giant health care company decided he didn’t need round-the-clock nursing care to keep him from suffocating. The decision would save Superior HealthPlan as much as $500 a day — and cost D’ashon everything.
“He would have lived a perfectly good life,” says Linda Badawo, the foster mother who adopted D’ashon. “If only they were paying attention to what I was saying.”
Texas pays Superior and other companies billions of dollars every year to arrange care for tens of thousands of kids like D’ashon: foster children, disabled children, chronically sick children. The companies promise to improve the lives of these kids, as well as adults with severe medical conditions and disabilities.
But under a system set up by the state, every dollar the companies don’t spend on health care they can use instead to hire high-powered lobbyists, pay millions in executive bonuses, and buy other businesses.
The state knows some companies are skimping on care to make profits but has failed to stop it.
The Dallas Morning News spent a year investigating the way Texas treats fragile and ailing residents who rely on Medicaid, the government insurance program for the poor and disabled.
We reviewed more than 70,000 pages of documents, including patient medical records and material that state officials and the companies tried to keep secret. We crunched financial and insurance-industry data and talked to hundreds of families, doctors and policy experts.
We found that state officials are protecting a booming multibillion-dollar industry while the most vulnerable Texans wait in vain for wheelchairs, psychiatric drugs and doctors’ appointments. That system has failed countless disabled adults and sick children who can’t advocate for themselves.
Because of the recent resignations of its top officials, the state health commission said it could not make anyone available to discuss problems with corporate management of Medicaid. In a lengthy statement, it acknowledged many of the problems we found.
In response to our findings, the commission has asked the Legislature for more money to implement “a blueprint for protecting our fragile children in the Medicaid program and children in foster care,” including hiring 50 more people to help check on patients who might not be receiving adequate care.