41 pages • 1 hour read
Virginia EubanksA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Eubanks describes visiting Kim and Kevin Stipes in Tipton, Indiana. Their daughter Sophie has cerebral palsy, among other conditions, which in total cost the family more than $6000 a month in medical expenses. After a mix-up, the local Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) cut of Sophie Stipes’s Medicaid benefits for inaction, even though the office failed to inform the Stipes of mandatory paperwork. Sophie’s case was only addressed after the Stipeses protested at the governor’s office and received TV coverage.
The Stipeses were emblematic of what happens when welfare is privatized. In 2006, Indiana Republican governor Mitch Daniels “instituted a welfare reform program that relied on multinational corporations to streamline benefits applications, privatize casework, and identify fraud” (45). Daniels’s actual agenda was funneling public taxpayer funds to private business: “By the time of the automation, the FSSA had halved its public workforce and was spending 92 percent of its budget buying services from outside vendors” (47).
After Indiana instituted an automated referral system made by IBM and ACS, the state’s welfare system fell apart: Private call center employees were not equipped with the proper training or emotional resiliency required of their new jobs, which meant applicants were stranded. Errors surged, as a “result of inflexible rules that interpreted any deviation from the newly rigid application process, no matter how inconsequential or inadvertent, as an active refusal to cooperate” (51).
Plus, gain access to 8,450+ more expert-written Study Guides.
Including features:
Books on Justice & Injustice
View Collection
Books on U.S. History
View Collection
Business & Economics
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Class
View Collection
Common Reads: Freshman Year Reading
View Collection
Contemporary Books on Social Justice
View Collection
Equality
View Collection
Political Science Texts
View Collection
Politics & Government
View Collection
Poverty & Homelessness
View Collection
Science & Nature
View Collection
Sociology
View Collection