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mallorys_cameraThe average developmental disabilities Human Services agency uses your basic pimp business model. The only functional differences are that (a) the client population is not horny guys but the planet's most vulnerable beings, people suffering from low spectrum autism, cerebral palsy, Downs syndrome, neurological afflictions that render them utterly helpless; and (b) there are many more layers of middle management.
Basic service providers -- who are the only people actually doing the client services that the system was formulated to provide -- make approximately $11 an hour. Staff that oversee them are salaried, but if you broke that compensation down into an hourly recompense, it would generally start around $40.
The idea behind these layers of oversight is that the basic care givers who are willing to spoon feed the client population and wipe shit from their behinds for the low, low, low price of eleven bucks an hour are people of such intrinsically low moral character that massive amounts of supervision are required to prevent them from actively torturing the client population. This supervision takes the form of quality assurance, human resources, nurses etc.
It's a kind of pyramid.
At the top of the pyramid sit the CEOS of these strange little Human Services pimping enterprises,the hustlers who figured they'd go the overland route when all their pals were setting up underground crack cocaine enterprises.
###
The cash cow here is Medicaid.
Between 1975 and April 2013, the average Medicaid reimbursement rate in New York state for services to the developmentally disabled escalated from $39 a day to $5,118 a day.
Yes, you're reading that figure right! Five thousand, one hundred and eighteen dollars a day.
Figure you select for a higher quality caregiver by paying them $40 an hour and dispensing with the middle bureaucracy; that's still only $960 a day. Figure the rent on a group home is $5,000 a month or $167 a day; figure an equivalent amount in food, utilities and other overhead. Figure insurance is $100 a day,and medical expenditures are $100 a day. Figure you appease the gods of bureaucracy by throwing them a couple of hundred. That's still only $1,700 a day.
Where did the other $3,400 a day go?
Well, it went into the pockets of the big pimp daddies who were crafty enough to come up with the Human Service agencies scams in the first place.
Big pimp daddies like Deacon Cal Cooley, the CEO of Pollyanna Human Services,t he umbrella organization for my little at risk teens program.
###
Alas, the Medicaid bubble was popped in April 2013. New York state slashed the reimbursement rate to $1,200, which is probably just where it should be. The federal government is even making noises like it's going to go after these human services agencies for the overpayments, which amount to something like $15 billion over the past two decades.
This puts those human services agencies in a very vulnerable position.
Deacon Cal Cooley's response was to fire 2/3 of his employees last Thursday, everyone at Pollyanna Human Services not associated with either accounting or the direct administration of services.
Unfortunately, this included LaDonna, the very sweet young woman who supervised my project. Collateral damage.
Yeah, I understand why Cooley did it. I've been following the Medicaid numbers since I got here in July. Cuomo's new budget actually calls for a 6% slash of that $1,200, which may not be enough to sustain justifiable services – I dunno.
But the firings were done very, very badly. Cooley must have known since – what? April? -- that massive restructurings were necessary. One of the women he fired and gave half an hour to to clear her possessions out of the building had been with the organization for 23 years.
It doesn't affect the money that's paying me. In a lot of ways, it actually works to my advantage. I thought a lot of LaDonna's programmatic ideas were weak myself. Since LaDonna was pretty much an information station unto herself and they didn't take the time to debrief her, whoever inherits the supervision of Jeremy and myself will know absolutely nothing about the at risk youth program, which means that Jeremy and I can more-or-less turn it anything.
Since the funding mechanism I'm working on -- an entrepreneurial initiative -- is not donation-based, the at risk youth program actually ought to be able to survive even under the leaky Pollyanna umbrella. But, of course, the program's survival is not my problem: I'm outa here in July 2014. I will have succeeded in fulfilling my VISTA mission -- which was to figure out a way to make the at risk youth services sustainable. To build capacity. If Pollyanna does what I tell them to do, and if I can get the donations I need to take care of the business's start-up costs, the at risk youth program will be sustainable. The business should be able to generate 50 K a year – small pickin's compared to the cream that Cooley & Co have been skimming so I don't think he'll go after it.
As for me, maybe I can set up a consulting business. If I set up the business successfully.
Watching 25 people get fired one by one on Thursday – thank you for your many years of faithful service; we won't be needing it anymore – left me feeling absolutely horrible. I felt even even worst when I watched Deacon Cal Cooley drive off in his shiny black 2013 Eldorado after it was all done.
It really is a zero sum game for those of us who were born with neither luck nor the hustling gene.
###
After she started to know me, LaDonna would talk to me occasionally about her childhood.
She grew up in a notorious project in Queens. Periodically, some drug dealer or other wanton criminal type would try to lose himself in the project and the police would assemble their swat teams in front and put the project into lockdown. LaDonna and her three sisters looked forward to these times because of course they couldn't leave the project and that meant they could miss school.
"Cops would go out to the corner stores, come back with potato chips, candy, grape soda," La Donna would smile, remembering. "Pretty much that's all we would eat. For days sometimes. Two thirds of the kids I went to elementary school with are dead now. Dead, in prison or junkies, which is pretty much the same thing."
Religion saved LaDonna. Religion and her mother, who was not going to let her four daughters go down without a fight.
Her mother enrolled the girls in an Open Model charter school around the time that LaDonna had her first personal encounter with Jesus Christ.
When I went up to LaDonna, stunned, after she was fired, she held up her hand and smiled her luminous smile at me when I started spewing my indignity. "It's okay, Patrizia. It's okay. I've been called to the ministry. God came to me and told me this was only a waystation. That life is only a waystation."
Weeeelll, okay, LaDonna. But please, please, please file for unemployment.
Basic service providers -- who are the only people actually doing the client services that the system was formulated to provide -- make approximately $11 an hour. Staff that oversee them are salaried, but if you broke that compensation down into an hourly recompense, it would generally start around $40.
The idea behind these layers of oversight is that the basic care givers who are willing to spoon feed the client population and wipe shit from their behinds for the low, low, low price of eleven bucks an hour are people of such intrinsically low moral character that massive amounts of supervision are required to prevent them from actively torturing the client population. This supervision takes the form of quality assurance, human resources, nurses etc.
It's a kind of pyramid.
At the top of the pyramid sit the CEOS of these strange little Human Services pimping enterprises,the hustlers who figured they'd go the overland route when all their pals were setting up underground crack cocaine enterprises.
The cash cow here is Medicaid.
Between 1975 and April 2013, the average Medicaid reimbursement rate in New York state for services to the developmentally disabled escalated from $39 a day to $5,118 a day.
Yes, you're reading that figure right! Five thousand, one hundred and eighteen dollars a day.
Figure you select for a higher quality caregiver by paying them $40 an hour and dispensing with the middle bureaucracy; that's still only $960 a day. Figure the rent on a group home is $5,000 a month or $167 a day; figure an equivalent amount in food, utilities and other overhead. Figure insurance is $100 a day,and medical expenditures are $100 a day. Figure you appease the gods of bureaucracy by throwing them a couple of hundred. That's still only $1,700 a day.
Where did the other $3,400 a day go?
Well, it went into the pockets of the big pimp daddies who were crafty enough to come up with the Human Service agencies scams in the first place.
Big pimp daddies like Deacon Cal Cooley, the CEO of Pollyanna Human Services,t he umbrella organization for my little at risk teens program.
Alas, the Medicaid bubble was popped in April 2013. New York state slashed the reimbursement rate to $1,200, which is probably just where it should be. The federal government is even making noises like it's going to go after these human services agencies for the overpayments, which amount to something like $15 billion over the past two decades.
This puts those human services agencies in a very vulnerable position.
Deacon Cal Cooley's response was to fire 2/3 of his employees last Thursday, everyone at Pollyanna Human Services not associated with either accounting or the direct administration of services.
Unfortunately, this included LaDonna, the very sweet young woman who supervised my project. Collateral damage.
Yeah, I understand why Cooley did it. I've been following the Medicaid numbers since I got here in July. Cuomo's new budget actually calls for a 6% slash of that $1,200, which may not be enough to sustain justifiable services – I dunno.
But the firings were done very, very badly. Cooley must have known since – what? April? -- that massive restructurings were necessary. One of the women he fired and gave half an hour to to clear her possessions out of the building had been with the organization for 23 years.
It doesn't affect the money that's paying me. In a lot of ways, it actually works to my advantage. I thought a lot of LaDonna's programmatic ideas were weak myself. Since LaDonna was pretty much an information station unto herself and they didn't take the time to debrief her, whoever inherits the supervision of Jeremy and myself will know absolutely nothing about the at risk youth program, which means that Jeremy and I can more-or-less turn it anything.
Since the funding mechanism I'm working on -- an entrepreneurial initiative -- is not donation-based, the at risk youth program actually ought to be able to survive even under the leaky Pollyanna umbrella. But, of course, the program's survival is not my problem: I'm outa here in July 2014. I will have succeeded in fulfilling my VISTA mission -- which was to figure out a way to make the at risk youth services sustainable. To build capacity. If Pollyanna does what I tell them to do, and if I can get the donations I need to take care of the business's start-up costs, the at risk youth program will be sustainable. The business should be able to generate 50 K a year – small pickin's compared to the cream that Cooley & Co have been skimming so I don't think he'll go after it.
As for me, maybe I can set up a consulting business. If I set up the business successfully.
Watching 25 people get fired one by one on Thursday – thank you for your many years of faithful service; we won't be needing it anymore – left me feeling absolutely horrible. I felt even even worst when I watched Deacon Cal Cooley drive off in his shiny black 2013 Eldorado after it was all done.
It really is a zero sum game for those of us who were born with neither luck nor the hustling gene.
After she started to know me, LaDonna would talk to me occasionally about her childhood.
She grew up in a notorious project in Queens. Periodically, some drug dealer or other wanton criminal type would try to lose himself in the project and the police would assemble their swat teams in front and put the project into lockdown. LaDonna and her three sisters looked forward to these times because of course they couldn't leave the project and that meant they could miss school.
"Cops would go out to the corner stores, come back with potato chips, candy, grape soda," La Donna would smile, remembering. "Pretty much that's all we would eat. For days sometimes. Two thirds of the kids I went to elementary school with are dead now. Dead, in prison or junkies, which is pretty much the same thing."
Religion saved LaDonna. Religion and her mother, who was not going to let her four daughters go down without a fight.
Her mother enrolled the girls in an Open Model charter school around the time that LaDonna had her first personal encounter with Jesus Christ.
When I went up to LaDonna, stunned, after she was fired, she held up her hand and smiled her luminous smile at me when I started spewing my indignity. "It's okay, Patrizia. It's okay. I've been called to the ministry. God came to me and told me this was only a waystation. That life is only a waystation."
Weeeelll, okay, LaDonna. But please, please, please file for unemployment.
