Slow down effort to privatize benefits
November 21, 2006
The state's most needy residents have lost access to critical services. Taxpayers haven't saved a dollar.
Written by Editorial, San Antonio Express-News
The theory behind privatization of public services is to increase efficiency to consumers and lower costs to taxpayers. But as a new study by the Center for Public Policy Priorities suggests, that theory doesn't always hold up in practice.
The study examined the Texas experience in privatizing the state's public benefits system, including the eligibility and enrollment process for food stamps, Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.
The state has been trying to modernize that system for more than a decade, moving away from client-based offices in communities to call centers that handle cases on an assembly-line basis. In 2005, the state awarded a five-year, $899 million contract to a consortium of companies led by Accenture LLP to privatize the call centers through the Texas Integrated Eligibility and Enrollment Services.
But the privately administered system has been plagued by problems: technical difficulties, staffing shortages and inadequately trained personnel. Thousands of Texans who depend on these services have met with frustrating delays and sometimes wrongfully have been denied benefits.
More than 100,000 children fell off the rolls of the Children's Health Insurance Program alone. And its not at all clear Texas taxpayers have saved a penny.
In May, the state indefinitely delayed the further rollout of the Texas Integrated Eligibility and Enrollment Services. When the Legislature reconvenes in January, lawmakers need to take a hard look at what's gone wrong.
No one doubts the state's system of public benefits needed modernizing or that, like any other bureaucracy, it could operate more efficiently. But Texas has either gone down the path of modernization and privatization too quickly or it has gone down the wrong path. And vulnerable children, the elderly and people with disabilities have paid the price.
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