Burnt Orange Report

HHSC Refuses State Audit Report

By Phillip Martin

The Texas Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) has refused a state audit report because the Commission disagreed with the report's findings. The folks over at Pinkdome have been following the story. Here's what's going on:

In 2003, the Legislature passed House Bill 2292, which consolidated and privatized many Health and Human Services agencies. That privatization has already resulted in the loss of jobs for workers and the closing of many HHS offices in smaller, rural communities.

Then, last week, the San Antonio Express-News reported that:

The $45 million in savings Texas' Health and Human Services Commission hoped to realize by privatizing its payroll and human resources operations will be far less, according to a state auditor's office report to be released next week.

The audit, a draft of which was obtained by the Express-News, said a substantial amount of the projected savings evaporated after "errors and complete data" were considered.

That version of the audit said the commission would save only $1.1 million over five years. The commission disputed that number.

The reason the HHSC privatization bill was able to pass, despite heavy criticism, was because of promises that it would save the state so much money a year. Apparently, when the independent state audit reported showed that the HHSC miscalculated and misrepresented savings to a tune of $43.9 million, the HHSC got testy:

Last year, the commission, which oversees all of the state's health and welfare services, said it was beginning its effort to privatize some services now provided by state workers as a cost-saving move.

Because the commission disagreed with the auditors' preliminary analysis that only $1.1 million would be saved, the figure was dropped from the auditors' final report, released Tuesday.

So what does all this mean? Well, it shows that these privatization companies are more concerned about increasing their profits and outsourcing than they are about actually saving the state money or providing health care services to Texans across the state. In rural areas of Texas, Health and Human Services offices are a major employer, and when you close an office you not only make it harder for people in that area to seek health care assistance, you take away the economic security of the workers and citizens of that community.

Thanks, again, to Pinkdome for keeping up with this.