ATLANTA (Georgia Recorder) — Georgia is set to hand over control of Medicaid services for foster children to UnitedHealthcare, leading some foster parents and advocates to express concerns.
John DeGarmo, foster parent to more than 60 children and founder of the Foster Care Institute advocacy group, said one of his major concerns is with mental health treatment.
“There’s a 70% increase in teenage suicide since the lockdowns. Children are facing more and more depression issues, anxiety issues, all this surrounding mental health,” he said. “It’s so important they get the support services they need, and they may not if they have that switch. And that, to me, is very alarming because we will lose foster parents as a result. And that is so important. Right now we are struggling. Agencies in Georgia and throughout the country are struggling to recruit foster parents and retain foster parents, and if they don’t get the support services they need, we’re going to have a hard time retaining the ones we have.”
The Georgia Department of Community Health announced United as a provisional winner in December, the same month ProPublica released a report that found the company has a policy to cut costs by denying effective and necessary treatments for children with autism.
December was also the month United CEO Brian Thompson was fatally shot in New York. The slaying launched a national conversation on the morality of insurance companies’ profit motive to deny claims.
UnitedHealthcare did not respond to emailed requests for comment. The Department of Community Health declined to comment, saying the contract is still under a period of protest.
The change is set to kick in by next July unless changes are made during the appeal period.
Former foster parent Veda Brooks said children in foster care often need mental health care more than their peers but often have the most trouble getting it.
“They don’t go to foster care because they’ve done something wrong; they go to foster care because they’ve had to live through situations that most adults won’t even fathom they could have gone through at that age,” she said. “And so that mental health care is just like dental and physical health, it’s that important, especially since the goal of foster care is to produce functional humans when they age out. And when you look at a system that declares someone an adult at 18 based on that number, we need to give them the best foundation we can, mentally, otherwise we’re going to continue to see the increase in our foster kids becoming trafficked, homeless, uneducated.”
