Once in a while, I write a column in which I don’t make any snide remarks. For instance, back in January, I devoted this space to quotes from officials at the state Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) and Governor John Baldacci’s administration attempting to explain when problems with the Medicaid computer system — problems that have cost taxpayers close to $60 million and delayed payments of hundreds of millions of dollars to health-care providers — would be solved. The estimates ranged from the “next few weeks” (February 2005) to “the near future” (September 2006). By early 2007, the people in charge of this disaster were talking about “a new approach,” code words for turning the whole mess over to the private sector.
Let’s see how that’s going. But this time, no guarantees on the snide remarks.
“My goal is less than a year from now, we will have a plan in place that has full federal support, and that I can divert my attention to the other issues of this department.”
That was Brenda Harvey, commissioner of DHHS, quoted in the Kennebec Journal on January 12, 2007. In February, Harvey told the Bangor Daily News she hoped to sign a contract with a private company to take over Medicaid billing within six months. But, she added, it could take three years for the new system to be fully implemented.
In a May 14 story in the Morning Sentinel headlined “Medical billing woes persist,” Harvey’s date for that contract signing had slipped to June 2008, after which it would take at least 18 months to design a new program. “The governor, Legislature and I want that to be a much shorter time frame,” she said. “Whatever decisions we make, we will have assurance they are going to work.”
That means the current computer system will continue operating until at least 2010, screwing up about 4 percent of new claims and failing to deal with most of the old ones, which still number in the thousands.
“A new system can’t be put in place overnight,” Harvey wrote in a May 21 op-ed piece in the Morning Sentinel. “It’s not a question of ordering a couple of Dells online and plugging them into the wall.
“The reality is that a three-year timeline is based on the experience of states that have recently completed the process. If we don’t set realistic and responsible timetables, we’ll be a lot more likely to repeat the mistakes of the past.”
Yes, we are.
Very early
It’s 2007. Do you know where you’re going to find your 2010 gubernatorial candidates?
If you’re the Democrats, they’ve found you. John Richardson, the former speaker of the House and current commissioner of economic and community development, and Steve Rowe, the state’s attorney general, are already trying to out-maneuver each other for the nomination. And a half-dozen less likely contenders are wandering around with that slack-jawed look that says, “If Baldacci can be governor, maybe I can, too.”
But if you’re the Republicans, the field is a little thin. You’ll have your losers from previous campaigns, unknown state legislators with overactive ambition glands and wackdoodles promoting agendas from recently discovered planets in other galaxies. But nobody you’d go so far as to call electable.
