Hot Topic (2/6): Nine-year old dies from asthma. Who's to blame?
A Montbello mother says her 9-year-old son's death from severe asthma could have been prevented had Denver Human Services resolved problems with his Medicaid pharmacy benefits.
Zuton Lucero said she called Human Services every three days for months last year when she was suddenly unable to get prescription drugs for her son, Zumante.
The boy's health deteriorated without the medication, his doctor said, and he died at Children's Hospital in July after losing consciousness at his house after an attack.
"I don't want anyone else to be sitting where I'm sitting," Lucero said.
Advocacy lawyers who met Wednesday with the Colorado Attorney General's Office hold up Lucero's story as an example of how serious the problems are with the state's $243 million computer system that is supposed to manage benefits - and the county human workers behind it.
"The human system fell down," said Ed Kahn, a lawyer with the Colorado Center for Law and Policy, who is among a group of local and national lawyers weighing a lawsuit against the state for delays in getting food stamps and Medicaid benefits to people. "They are responsible for this kid's death."
The Colorado Benefits Management System is run through county human services offices and manages medical and food-assistance benefits for everyone in Colorado. Since its 2004 installation, the system has been beset by problems.
Lawyers advocating for Colorado's needy sat down with state officials Wednesday to discuss the problems that have the lawyers weighing whether to sue the state as they did in 2005 over similar issues.
"They presented us with some new information, and we listened carefully," Kahn said. "We hope to make a decision in relatively short order about how we are going to move forward."
Lucero, who works as a paraprofessional in Denver Public Schools, said Wednesday that she will continue to tell the story of Zumante's death "to enough people so that it won't ever be anyone else's story."
In addition to working with the advocacy lawyers, she has hired a personal attorney and is exploring a lawsuit against Denver.
Zumante had struggled with asthma since he was 3 months old. But when he was 6, the condition became serious enough for his mother to apply for benefits under Social Security, which also entitles him to Medicaid.
Andrew Lieber was Zu mante's physician since birth. He said the boy's lungs were severely inflamed, and his twice-daily medication, Advair, helped control that.
Last March, Lucero went to fill her son's prescriptions at a Walgreens near her home in Montbello. A worker there said Zumante didn't have prescription-drug coverage anymore.
Lucero says she called Denver Human Services every three days for four months trying to get him drug coverage. Each time she called, an automatic computer report was issued and sent to her house usually showing that all of her children - including Zumante - qualified for Medicaid.
But even when she brought in the reports to Walgreens, she was told the computer system showed he wasn't eligible for pharmaceutical benefits.
Throughout months of frustrating phone calls to Human Services' call-center operators, which often left Lucero in tears, Zumante's health weakened. She managed to reach her caseworker only once. The caseworker told her in March that the problem had been resolved.
Just why the system showed Zumante wasn't eligible for the prescription benefit - when in fact he was - still is not clear.
The little boy, who loved karate, drawing cartoon figures and riding bikes with his brothers and sisters, was often caught in spasms of panic because he couldn't catch his breath.
He went to the emergency room in May and June when the inhalers and nebulizers Lucero carried were not enough.
During the June trip to the ER, Lucero told doctors she wasn't able to get him his Advair.
They gave her some samples. When she told Zumante he was going to get to start taking his medicine again, the boy was so relieved he cried.
But it was too late. The medicine works progressively to keep inflammation down, Lieber said.
On July 16, Lucero was home and heard Zumante call her name from upstairs. He was on the nebulizer and told her he couldn't breathe. She called an ambulance. While she was waiting, Zumante lost consciousness.
She cradled him in the front yard while she waited to hear sirens. By the time paramedics got him to Children's Hospital, he had been unconscious for more than 10 minutes.
For four days, he was kept alive on a ventilator, but when Lucero decided to disconnect it, he died within a few minutes.
Denver Human Services officials said the agency "feels the death of any child as a tragic loss," said spokeswoman Revekka Balancier. "And our department tries very hard to prevent these kinds of tragic accidents."
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Who is ultimately responsible for this child's death?
Lack of universal healthcare in this country.
YES YES YES YES!!!!!!!!
This story makes my stomach churn.
This shit should NEVER happen in a nation as advanced as ours.
Fuck.
Now I am damned pissed.
Quoting Goodwoman614:Who is ultimately responsible for this child's death?
Lack of universal healthcare in this country.
Quoting Goodwoman614:
Who is ultimately responsible for this child's death?
Lack of universal healthcare in this country.
What does an imput error have to do with lack of universal healthcare.
How sad. I do think they have responsability for it to an exstent.
I definitely blame the screwed up computer system. They should definitely shoulder some of the responsibility.
This is going to be an unpopular view, but I am also pointing a finger at the mother. I know she kept calling the state and her hands were tied there. But honestly, if my child needed a medication to keep him ALIVE I would sell my body on the street to get that money.
I don't know her situation and I am trying very hard to understand, but this child was going months and months without medication and I would have every creditor in the world after me because I wouldn't be paying any bills, but I would get that money.
I think there are a lot of people to blame in this scenario. Obviously the computer system and the people behind it. But I ask myself what I would do if it was my child...and I would do more than call a non-responsive office. Maybe she did more and this article doesn't say, who knows. I can only go by the information given here.
So, bash away.
Quoting PestPatti:
Quoting Goodwoman614:
Who is ultimately responsible for this child's death?
Lack of universal healthcare in this country.
What does an imput error have to do with lack of universal healthcare.
It might even make it worse! If one state can't even run itself administratively, I fear for the computer systems that would be responsible for monitoring the entire COUNTRY. UHC doesn't mean you walk into a Walgreens and they hand you the medicine for free, with no paperwork whatsoever. There will still be computer records, and files, etc. All administrated by the government. Stories like this make that an even scarier thought to me than it is to begin with.
I agree. In that sitation I would be asking churches for help, the doctor for samples, calling the company that makes the medicine, selling anything I could, borrowing from friends, ect to make sure my kid had their medicine.
Quoting StrayMom:
I definitely blame the screwed up computer system. They should definitely shoulder some of the responsibility.
This is going to be an unpopular view, but I am also pointing a finger at the mother. I know she kept calling the state and her hands were tied there. But honestly, if my child needed a medication to keep him ALIVE I would sell my body on the street to get that money.
I don't know her situation and I am trying very hard to understand, but this child was going months and months without medication and I would have every creditor in the world after me because I wouldn't be paying any bills, but I would get that money.
I think there are a lot of people to blame in this scenario. Obviously the computer system and the people behind it. But I ask myself what I would do if it was my child...and I would do more than call a non-responsive office. Maybe she did more and this article doesn't say, who knows. I can only go by the information given here.
So, bash away.
We don't know where all his mother went for help, what begging she did, what programs she tried, what she sold, etc. She may have done everything we can think of and more and still not been able to provide him with his medicine. She still had to pay utilities. She still had to buy groceries. She may have held off on rent, but utilities and groceries won't wait.
All doctors do not give out samples and even those who do can run out. They also usually limit how many they give out so they can help more people.
It's a tragedy.
Eight Year Old Girl Given "Catastrophe Award" By Teacher
Are you on any medication? Do you feel drugs are pushed on Americans?
- Cafe GroupAdmin
on Feb. 6, 2010 at 12:56 AM