You know how this works: the government jobs with pensions and health insurance are replaced by minimum-wage call center jobs and the owners of the call center skim off the surplus, saving taxpayers...nothing.

According to The Cap Times:

A spokesman for Badger Cab says the company is "severing its relationship" with Logisticare because of "numerous issues," including customer phone numbers and addresses provided by Logisticare that were "riddled with errors" and communications problems so serious that at one point on a chaotic Friday, according to accounts representative Kurt Schneider, "four or five" of his dispatchers could not take regular calls because they were trying to iron out problems with Logisticare customers.... On Saturday, several patients waited up to two hours at home for rides to critical dialysis treatments, according to one nurse at the Wisconsin Dialysis Center on Fish Hatchery Road. As a result, says the nurse who did not want to be identified, a couple of the patients were not given their full treatments.

Hmmm. That's not the way it was advertised by Deputy Secretary Rhoades. The press release said this:

Rides to medical appointments for Medicaid enrollees will be more accessible and services more consistent when the state's contract with LogistiCare goes into effect on July 1, according to Department of Health Services (DHS) officials.

...and this:

LogistiCare's driver and vehicle requirements will offer greater safety protections for riders, Rhoades said.

Yep, nothing is safer than missing your dialysis treatment because a Logisticare operator in Arizona has no idea that Milwaukee and Madison are 75 miles apart.

It's not like we didn't see this coming. From the Cap Times:

In Washington DC, officials severed the contract after an embarrassing series of articles in the Washington Post about disabled patients left stranded for hours, and last winter in Minnesota poor service after Logisticare took over Medicaid transportation there sparked embarrassing news accounts and public protests.

On the brighter side, this should be good news for greedy, middle-aged sons and daughters who work so hard to hide Mom's assets so she can qualify for Medicaid, saving their precious inheritance. With Logisticare in charge, Mom will definitely die a little sooner, saving everyone money, especially her heirs.

My liberal friend has a good response when someone says "A conservative is a liberal who's been mugged."

"A liberal is a conservative whose mother is in a nursing home," he answers.

Here's mine: A free-market Republican is an a$$hole with a government contract.

UPDATE 07/06/2011 7:58 am CDT: From cab driver Bondibox in the comment section:



I drive a cab and I'm one of the few drivers who will take Logisticare runs. The first bummer for the driver, is these runs go for about .40¢ on the dollar compared to a regular fare. But it's better than nothing, if there's nothing else going on. For example, a short run pays about $4.80. Sounds reasonable if you're sitting behind a desk, but when you figure a driver usually has to come from a different zone, it's 10 minutes there, 5 minute wait, 5 minute drive, and another 5 minutes of paperwork and assisting the person inside. Nearly a half hour, for 5 bucks. Oh, and did I mention the price of gas? But by far, the worst part of it is the "callback number" which the driver usually gets, in order to notify the customer that the cab has arrived, is for logisticare and not the person who is taking the ride. So if there's a problem, there's really nothing the driver can do except void the run and move on. And as Badger cab quickly figured out, the regular business suffers as a result.

I work for Badger Cab...

Things were just fine before Logisticare. The county oversaw most of the rides and we never really had any problems. Now, drivers are losing money because of this and people who need it most aren't getting good service.

And from cab driver Blue Town, also in comments: