For just one moment, I ask to read the following statement taken from the article, below, very carefully:
Hubert has also placed $298,009 of the settlement in an escrow account to satisfy an automatic lien the Medicaid program places on any settlements or judgments collected by its beneficiaries.
The boy is a Medicaid beneficiary. Hubert said he has filed an appeal to prevent Medicaid from getting his client's money.
Yes, that is correct.
A boy, by the age of 3, who was under the aegis of a state foster care program, being serviced, and received even more services for being raped, beaten, tortured, then drugged to silences his screams, must reimburse Medicaid for the services provided.
I know boys who have survived, much worse, who were given a sentence to a life of poverty because the parents are obligated to reimburse Medicaid for the services provided to silence their screams.
Yes, the practice of legally charging parents to reimburse for the time a child has been in foster care is a well known practice, considered as a child support obligation, yet rarely pursued as reunification becomes a devoted life commitment of taking the children to more Medicaid services to address the hell the children survived.
In short, you cannot get blood from a stone, and most families are forced to live a life of poverty and cannot afford justice.
Not one penny of the Medicaid reimbursement the state is seeking to recover will be sent to reimburse the Social Security Trust program of Medicaid, so the States are double-dipping.
The U.S. HHS OIG will do nothing to stop this horrific treatment of children being constrained federalistically in the States rulemaking.
The White House will not even acknowledge this horrific treatment of children in its #HackFosterCare initiative.
The Medicaid Fraud Control Units of the States will do nothing to stop this practice, lacking authority, guidance and resources.
Congress and state elected officials will do nothing as it is in an election cycle and donors care nothing about stopping their lucrative businesses of "protecting children".
This draconian moment was brought to you by Medicaid fraud in child welfare and Paul Ryan's empowerment of privatization.
N.J. pays $1.25M to settle foster child sex abuse lawsuit
TRENTON — The state has agreed to pay $1.25 million to settle a lawsuit filed by the adoptive parents of a boy who endured physical and sexual abuse in multiple foster homes before his third birthday.
The boy will receive a check for $1,637.59 a month for the next 40 years, deposited into a special needs account, according to the settlement and the family's attorney, Craig J. Hubert of Lawrenceville.
The first check was expected to arrive this month, drawn from a state-created annuity worth $467,014.33, according to the March 11 settlement.
The money will be used "for the boy's treatment over the course of his lifetime as he is left to deal with the aftermath of horrific abuse and torture," Hubert said.
The state child welfare system, known at the time as the Division of Youth and Family Services, or DYFS, took custody of the infant after he was was born in what is today known as Trinitas Regional Medical Center in Elizabeth in May 1999, according to the 2011 lawsuit.
His mother had abandoned him at the hospital — a phenomenon at the time in which mothers, many drug-addicted, created a wave of "boarder babies" in maternity wards across the state.
DYFS enlisted a new nonprofit agency created by First Baptist Church of Lincoln Gardens in Franklin, Harvest of Hope, to recruit foster and adoptive families on the state's behalf for these abandoned newborns.
But neither Harvest of Hope nor DYFS performed any meaningful background checks on the foster families or their "paramours" who assumed care of the child, the first one in 1999, followed by two homes in mid-2002, according to the lawsuit.
Last year, Superior Court Judge Michael Nelson in Essex County agreed to drop Harvest of Hope from the lawsuit, citing its immunity from litigation as a charitable organization. Hubert said he has filed an appeal.
"I thought the decision by the trial judge was correct," said Harvest of Hope's Attorney Kenneth Ho of New Brunswick said.
The lawsuit also alleged that improperly supervised and untrained DYFS employees did not keep required routine visits, and had "failed to locate family members who were willing to care" of the baby.
Identified as S.B.K. in the court records, the baby was removed from the first foster home after DYFS confirmed that he and other children in the home had been abused and neglected. But the abuse continued in two subsequent foster homes.
By October 2002, the 3-1/2-year-old boy came to live with his eventual adoptive parents, the lawsuit said.
In settling the case, the state made no admission of wrongdoing.
The DYFS of 15-plus years ago does not resemble what is today known as the Division of Child Protection and Permanency, said Ernest Landante, spokesman for division's parent entity, the Department of Children and Families.
"Since then, the department has been fundamentally reformed, thoroughly changing its methods and policies," Landante said. "We vastly increased recruitment and retention of (foster) families and the use of kin so children can remain with relatives. We enhanced our screening and licensing standards and improved training for (foster) parents."
In 1999 – the year S.B.K. was born – the national advocacy group Children's Rights sued DYFS on behalf of foster children to force the state to spend more money and to run the dysfunctional agency properly. The lawsuit was settled in 2003 with a commitment the state would undertake a complete overhaul accept federal oversight. The latest monitoring report was released Wednesday.
The family will receive $467,014 of the $1.25 million settlement; the attorneys: $356,061 in fees and $88,414 in reimbursements; a psychiatrist: $22,000.
Hubert has also placed $298,009 of the settlement in an escrow account to satisfy an automatic lien the Medicaid program places on any settlements or judgments collected by its beneficiaries.
The boy is a Medicaid beneficiary. Hubert said he has filed an appeal to prevent Medicaid from getting his client's money.
"Medicaid has a right to the money as a matter of law, but it doesn't seem right my client, who had to bear this misery, should have to pay," he said.
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