Deborah Yetter

Louisville Courier Journal

FRANKFORT, Ky. - A new state computer system meant to help people get public benefits more easily instead is creating turmoil throughout Kentucky, interrupting health coverage, food stamps or other assistance for countless individuals, according to health and social service advocates.

People seeking help must wait hours or days, repeatedly calling a state helpline only to get a recorded message that advises them to try later and then hangs up, the advocates said. Others visit overcrowded state benefit offices where they must wait for hours - sometimes the entire day - to get help, they said.

"It's really frustrating," said Emily Pickett, a Louisville mother who learned Feb. 29 two of her three small children had been cut off from Medicaid coverage.

Further, the new system known as Benefind has disrupted the state's highly successful health insurance exchange, kynect, shutting people out of their online accounts or eliminating their health coverage altogether, they said.

"Benefind is a disaster," said Emily Beauregard, executive director of Kentucky Voices for Health, a coalition of health advocacy groups. "It's not working."

Top officials with the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, disputed the severity of the problems in an interview Friday. But they acknowledged problems with Benefind and said they are working to fix them.

"We are devoting all of our resources to making sure we get this transition on as smooth a path as possible," said Steve Davis, the cabinet's chief of staff. "This is a serious situation."

But he said the sheer size of the new $100 million benefit system, launched Feb. 29 after several years of design, has involved complications.

"With a rollout of any system of this magnitude, there's going to be a transition problem," Davis said.

Adria Johnson, the cabinet's commissioner of the Department of Community Based Services, which handles benefit claims, said her department is adding workers throughout the state to try to help more clients and cut waits for the call center.

Cabinet officials said in a press release Thursday they are working to address "unforeseen technical issues." The press release notes the Benefind system was initiated under the administration of Gov. Steve Beshear, who preceded Gov. Matt Bevin.

Bevin also addressed cabinet workers about the problem in a YouTube video titled "Message to DCBS Community," thanking them for their service and vowing to improve their working conditions.

"I'm aware of and sensitive to your frustrations," he said.

Meanwhile, health advocates say the Bevin administration has been excruciatingly slow to respond to what they say is a crisis for scores of Kentuckians who depend on such benefits and are bewildered to find themselves suddenly losing them or at risk of losing them with no recourse other than to spend days calling a cabinet hotline no one answers.

"It's a dramatic reduction in accessibility," said Cara Stewart, a legal aid lawyer with the Kentucky Equal Justice Center. "There's no way you can look at it and say it's not a dramatic reduction."

Benefind is wreaking havoc with the previously smooth-running kynect because many of the more than 500,000 Kentuckians who got health coverage through kynect were moved to the Benefind system with no warning and no explanation, advocates said. Consumers are getting form letters telling them health coverage has been cut off or demanding more information, such as proof of income or citizenship that they already had provided through kynect, advocates said.

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At the Family Health Centers in Louisville, an entire family lost health coverage after the Benefind system failed to identify them as legal residents of the United States, a status the family had already verified through kynect, said Jackie Engle, director of outreach and enrollment for the clinics.

"You have people who need assistance and they're unable to get it," she said.

Stewart said she helped one client get coverage through kynect but when he sought treatment after getting hit in the leg with a baseball, he discovered he'd been cut off without explanation of the Medicaid coverage he had never used.

Davis disputed claims about loss of benefits.

"No one that I know of is going to lose a benefit," he said.

And he said no kynect customers were "moved" to Benefind; rather some were simply included in the more expansive Benefind system, which is designed to work with kynect in managing all of an individual's benefits, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, more commonly known as food stamps.

Health advocates said that's not working.

Bill Wagner, executive director of Family Health Centers, said the new system has severely limited his staff's ability to help people get coverage through kynect because now many applicants are directed to Benefind, which only be accessed by state workers.

Although the two systems are supposed to work together, they don't, Wagner said.

"Kynectors," the corps of about 500 workers statewide trained to help people navigate kynect and sign up for health coverage, are shut out of Benefind. As a result, the half-dozen kynectors who work at Family Health Centers are unable to assist many people in applying for coverage or fixing problems with their coverage, he said.

"We've seen the number of applications we are able to process drop dramatically," he said.

Some lawmakers said they are increasingly concerned about problems with Benefind, including Rep. Joni Jenkins, a Shively Democrat and chairwoman of the House human resources budget subcommittee.

Many of the complaints involve the hotline people are instructed to call to resolve problems with benefits, including health coverage through Medicaid, which Kentucky expanded to include more low-income people under the Affordable Care Act.

"I've heard horrible things about wait times," Jenkins said. "It makes me suspicious that the end game is to make it impossible to get into Medicaid and save money."

Jenkins said she also wonders about Bevin's plan to dismantle kynect and transition people to the federal health exchange to shop for coverage. People who now should be able to use kynect to sign up for Medicaid would have to use Benefind.

"It's just crazy to me that we're going from a system that works to one that obviously has great difficulty in getting basic services to people," Jenkins said.

The hotline, (855) 306-8959, has been central to many of the complaints. Many callers get a recorded message telling them the call center is experiencing an unusually high volume of calls and to try again later. Then it disconnects.

Further, it's only available from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., limiting access for people who work, advocates said.

The recorded message also directs callers to use the Benefind website, which advocates said is riddled with glitches, difficult to use and no use to their clients who don't have computers or Internet access.

Among them is Connie Holt, 52, of Pike County, a disabled woman who lives on Social Security and doesn't own a computer. After she lost her Medicaid coverage this year, she said she spent days on the phone with the call center trying to get it reinstated.

"I would sit on the phone and cry," said Holt, who said she couldn't afford her blood pressure or diabetes medications or see a doctor in the two months she went without health coverage.

Unable to pay for care, she twice had to visit an emergency room and started skipping medication.

"It was so frustrating," she said. "I would just cry myself to sleep."

Pickett, the Louisville mother, said she was shocked when two of her children were inexplicably cut off from health coverage. She spent days calling DCBS, each time getting the recorded message to call another day.

So Pickett said she went to the cabinet's local office that handles benefit applications.

"It was packed, like wall-to-wall, take a number, packed," Pickett said.

Pickett said that after she waited several hours, a cabinet worker announced the computer system had crashed and people could either keep waiting or return another day.

Pickett, who is self-employed as a prenatal and childbirth educator, said she was able to return but knows many people can't.

"People have to take days off work," she said. "They could lose their jobs. I don't know exactly what the root cause is, but the system is not functioning at all for people."

Dortha Hagan, a Louisville mother of three, said she qualified for Medicaid coverage through kynect because of her modest income as a worker at a local, nonprofit mental health agency. While her coverage has not been affected, Hagan said she is anxious because she's heard horror stories from friends who have lost benefits.

"It's a complete mess," Hagan said. "People are getting kicked off the rolls for Medicaid and food stamps. For me as a mother it's really important that I get to keep insurance."

In Western Kentucky, the Bowling Green Legal Aid office was flooded with callers from its 35-county region who got notices of termination of benefits. The notices include the phone number of the local legal aid office for any client who needs legal assistance.

"It's inundated our office and I'm sure every other legal aid office in the state," said Daniel Curry, a staff member who assists people in obtaining benefits.

Nearly 700 people have called the Bowling Green office, he said, most saying they're being cut off food stamps and can't get through to anyone at the cabinet for an explanation. Other calls involved Medicaid or other public assistance, he said.

"They are frightened, they are frustrated," he said. "It's a huge issue when people are being denied necessary benefits."

Sheila Schuster, a longtime mental health advocate in Louisville, said she's especially concerned about people who gained access to coverage through the Medicaid expansion that makes anyone under 138 percent of the federal poverty level eligible. That includes impoverished people with mental illness or addiction who may not understand how to fight a sudden cutoff of coverage that stops treatment and medication.

"We know what happens then," Schuster said. "They end up under a bridge or in jail or commit suicide."

Contact reporter Deborah Yetter at (502)582-4228 or at dyetter@courier-journal.com.