The Obama administration said it erroneously calculated the number of people with health coverage under the Affordable Care Act, incorrectly adding 380,000 dental subscribers to raise the total above 7 million.
The accurate number with full health-care plans is 6.7 million as of Oct. 15, a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services confirmed today, saying the U.S. won’t include dental plans in future reports.
“The mistake we made is unacceptable,” Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Mathews Burwell said on her verified Twitter account. “I will be communicating that clearly throughout the department.”
The error was brought to light by Republican investigators for the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, using data they obtained from the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
“A mistake was made in calculating the number of individuals with effectuated Marketplace enrollments,” said Kevin Griffis, a spokesman for the U.S. Health and Human Services Department. “Individuals who had both Marketplace medical and dental coverage were erroneously counted in our recent announcements,” he said in an e-mail.
The new count puts enrollment short of a 2013 estimate by the Congressional Budget Office, adopted last year as a goal by the Obama administration, that 7 million people would be enrolled this year. Federal officials said in September they had 7.3 million people enrolled in coverage through new government-run insurance exchanges.
They didn’t distinguish between medical and dental plans, breaking from previous practice without notice.
No More Dental
“Moving forward only individuals with medical coverage will be included in our effectuated enrollment numbers,” Griffis said.
Blending dental and medical plans let the administration assert that enrollment was more than 7 million. The move also partly obscured the attrition of more than 1 million in the number of people enrolled in medical insurance.
The administration had supplied information about dental plans separately in earlier disclosures. In May, the government reported that 8 million were signed up for health plans and 1.1 million were in dental coverage.
Then in September, the numbers became less transparent.
The Medicare agency’s administrator, Marilyn Tavenner, released a new enrollment figure, obtained from insurance companies participating in the exchanges: 7.3 million people were “enrolled in the health insurance marketplace coverage,” she said at a hearing by the Republican-led Oversight committee.
Quietly Added
Tavenner didn’t elaborate or break out dental plans. Reporters asked a spokesman for her agency, Aaron Albright, for more detail on the number after the hearing: He said he had no additional information about it.
“After touting 8 million initial sign-ups for medical plans, four months later they engaged in a concerted effort to obscure a heavy drop-out rate of perhaps a million or more enrollees by quietly adding in dental plan sign-ups to exchange numbers,”
Republican Darrell Issa of California, chairman of the Oversight committee, said in an e-mail from a spokeswoman.
Charles Gaba, a Bloomfield Hills, Michigan-based blogger who backs the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and has accurately forecast enrollment, was among those who found Tavenner’s announcement encouraging.
He had predicted enrollment would suffer attrition of about 3 percent per month; Tavenner’s figure suggested the rate was lower, only about 2 percent.
“This is FANTASTIC news,” he wrote at the time.
He said yesterday that he is “appalled” to find out dental plans were included in the figure.
Shifting Estimates
“I really don’t see what the point would be of being misleading about that number,” he said in a phone interview. “Even if it had been 6.9 million, I don’t see that as being a terrible thing.”
The CBO, which forecasts enrollment under the Affordable Care Act, projected in 2013 that 7 million people would be signed up in 2014 before lowering the estimate by 1 million early this year.
The Obama administration has previously said that enrollment would erode from the 8 million figure. Some customers never paid their premiums or stopped paying. Some may have found alternative coverage, such as through a new job; others may have decided the program wasn’t worth the price.
“Instead of offering the public an accurate accounting, the administration engaged in an effort to obscure and downplay the number of dropouts,” Issa said.
Uninsured Drop
The success of the Affordable Care Act should be measured primarily by one “fundamental number,” the U.S. uninsured rate, U.S. health secretary has said. That number is down about four percentage points this year to 13.4 percent, according to Gallup Inc.
After Tavenner’s announcement in September that 7.3 million people had signed up, aides to the Oversight committee demanded the Medicare agency’s raw data. Weeks of negotiations yielded 289 password-protected Excel spreadsheets, each representing enrollment in a single insurance company’s Affordable Care Act health plans.
In addition to enrollment, the spreadsheets include information such as premium revenue each plan received and the amount of tax credits it was paid by the government, to discount premiums. Dividing total premium revenue by enrollment in the plans, the committee aides noticed that some plans had premiums of less than $60 a month.
The low-priced plans also received little in the way of tax credits. Dental coverage sold under the ACA isn’t eligible for the credits, unless it’s combined with a health plan. In that case, the credit first subsidizes the premium for medical coverage, and anything left over goes to the dental plan.
Critical Threshold
The 7 million threshold appears to be important for the administration, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the American Action Forum, a Washington advocacy group aligned with Republicans that has opposed the health law.
“It’s a little weird,” Holtz-Eakin, a former CBO director, said. “Usually, the goal is for the forecast to hit the reality, but here the reality is being massaged to hit the forecast.”
The dental-plan data may add to a growing credibility problem for the Obama administration, Holtz-Eakin said. Recently, the administration has rebutted remarks by a former adviser, Massachusetts Institute of Technology economics professor Jonathan Gruber, suggesting that Democrats deceived the public when the law was passed in 2010.
‘They Lied’
“The No. 1 most effective message against the Affordable Care Act is: they lied to you to get it through,” Holtz-Eakin said in a phone interview. “People believe that years now after its passage. The distrust is already there, and they’re doing nothing but exacerbate it.”
Burwell, the health secretary, said at a Nov. 10 event that Obamacare enrollment was 7.1 million in October, 200,000 less than in August, again without breaking out dental plans. “That’s the number of people currently enrolled and paying in the marketplace,” Burwell said at the event, which was hosted by the Democratic-aligned Center for American Progress.
Burwell reported the October number after Ted Strickland, the former Democratic governor of Ohio who moderated the event, asked her to respond to critics who say the Obama administration has not been transparent about enrollment or premiums under the Affordable Care Act.
“In terms of this transparency issue, what we’re trying to do is make sure we’re clear,” Burwell said. “What we try and do is give you information when we have it that’s accurate.”
As Republicans plot strategy on how to oppose President Obama's immigration changes, they're moving ahead with a plan to go after another signature policy: ObamaCare.
House Republicans today filed their expected lawsuit against the White House, arguing that the president overstepped his authority on certain parts of the legislation (including his postponement of the controversial employer mandate), reports the Wall Street Journal.
Though the suit had been threatened for a while, the filing seemed imminent when Republicans announced earlier this week that they had hired constitutional attorney Jonathan Turley.
Republicans had previously threatened to add their immigration objections to the ObamaCare lawsuit, given that both involve allegations of executive overreach, but today's suit addresses only the health care law, reports New York Times.
John Boehner lays out his main complaint: "If this president can get away with making his own laws, future presidents will have the ability to as well.
The House has an obligation to stand up for the Constitution, and that is exactly why we are pursuing this course of action." The suit was filed against the Health and Human Services and Treasury departments.
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced new guidelines in Washington Monday requiring health insurance plans beginning on or after August 1, 2012 to cover several women's preventive services, including birth control and voluntary sterilization.
According to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius the decision is a part of the Affordable Care Act's move to stop problems before they start.
"These historic guidelines are based on science and existing literature and will help ensure women get the preventive health benefits they need," she said in a news release.
In July, the Institute of Medicine issued the results of a scientific review of women's health needs and provided recommendations on specific preventive measures to help them. Today HHS approved those recommendations.
Besides contraceptive use, the list includes free screenings for conditions such as gestational diabetes and the human papillomavirus (HPV), as well as breastfeeding support and counseling on sexually transmitted diseases. The full list is available on the Department of Health and Human Services website.
Overheard on CNN.com -- Birth control should be free
The decision to offer free contraception was not supported by all. For example, groups like the Family Research Council claims the decision "undermines the conscience rights of many Americans" and Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, chairman of Committee on Pro-Life Activities with the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops says "pregnancy is not a disease, and fertility is not a pathological condition to be suppressed by any means technically possible."
They feel the decision forces people to participate who may have moral or religious convictions that oppose contraception use.
The Obama administration released an amendment to the prevention regulation that allows religious institutions offering health insurance to their employees the choice of whether or not to cover contraception services.
However, supporters say the service will help millions of women who struggle to afford prescription birth control.
Birth control should be fully covered under health plans, report says
"Covering birth control without co-pays is one of the most important steps we can take to prevent unintended pregnancy and keep women and children healthy," said Dr. Vanessa Cullins, vice president for medical affairs at Planned Parenthood Federation of America when the IOM recommendations were released.
Supporters also say covering contraception helps the government save money up front.
According to an analysis from the Guttmacher Institute, in 2006, of the 2 million publicly funded births, 51% resulted from unintended pregnancies, accounting for more than $11 billion in costs.
The report found that this is a disproportionate burden on programs such as Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, given that only 38% of all U.S. births result from unintended pregnancies.
The number of reported Child Abuse and Neglect cases in Charlotte-Mecklenburg County rose 22 percent between 2004 and 2009, according to a study released Wednesday.
Researchers found there were 12,232 reports of abuse or neglect between July 1, 2008, and June 30, 2009 - about 2,200 more than during the same time span from 2004 to 2005.
The findings were revealed during a press conference by UNC Charlotte's Urban Institute and the Council for Children's Rights, who jointly initiated the research.
The jump in reported child abuse and neglect left child advocates baffled. They said they could not explain why there was such a "significant increase," which outpaced the overall growth of the youth population and statewide trends.
"We tried to track down the answer," said Brett Loftis, executive director of the Council for Children's Rights. "We called (Mecklenburg) DSS and they said, 'We don't know.'"
A jump in reported neglect signals that high unemployment, home foreclosures and other fallout from the nation's economic downturn played a role, Loftis said. The definition of child neglect includes a failure to provide adequate food, shelter, clothing and other necessities, he said.
Anxiety about finances increases stress for adults and often leads to inappropriate discipline, Loftis said.
The study results mirror other assessments that find North Carolina does a poor job protecting children from abuse and neglect.
Action for Children North Carolina, a Raleigh-based child advocacy group, issued a report last year that graded the state on child health indicators such as immunizations, substance abuse and insurance coverage. For child abuse and neglect, North Carolina received a D.
Activists say the state doesn't spend enough money to hire social workers or pay for programs to combat substance abuse and domestic violence, which are often linked to child abuse.
North Carolina spends $43.12 per capita on child protection, less than all but eight states, according to a study released last year by Every Child Matters, a Washington-based advocacy organization. Rhode Island spent the most at $181.34 per capita, while South Carolina allocated the least at $14.72 per capita.
"People tend to think of child abuse as over and fixed" because public awareness has increased, Loftis said. "You have to move from awareness to doing something to fix it."
The Charlotte-Mecklenburg County study found:
Children younger than 5 were most likely to suffer abuse and neglect. Some 40percent of the children who were reported as victims from 2008 to 2009 were younger than 5.
>A disproportionate number of victims were African-American. More than 50 percent of reported cases of abuse and neglect involved African-American children, although the group comprises roughly a third of children in the county.
Officials said the figures do not necessarily mean African-Americans abuse and neglect children more often. They said there is a connection between poverty and abuse. And they said, some groups do not report incidents because they fear police or the government.
The number of reported sex abuse cases decreased 20 percent. There were 79 reported cases in 2008-09, compared to 98 in 2004-05.
President Obama mandated Thursday that nearly all hospitals extend visitation rights to the partners of gay men and lesbians and respect patients' choices about who may make critical health-care decisions for them, perhaps the most significant step so far in his efforts to expand the rights of gay Americans.
The president directed the Department of Health and Human Services to prohibit discrimination in hospital visitation in a memo that was e-mailed to reporters Thursday night while he was at a fundraiser in Miami.
Administration officials and gay activists, who have been quietly working together on the issue, said the new rule will affect any hospital that receives Medicare or Medicaid funding, a move that covers the vast majority of the nation's health-care institutions. Obama's order will start a rule-making process at HHS that could take several months, officials said.
Hospitals often bar visitors who are not related to an incapacitated patient by blood or marriage, and gay rights activists say many do not respect same-sex couples' efforts to designate a partner to make medical decisions for them if they are seriously ill or injured.
"Discrimination touches every facet of the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people, including at times of crisis and illness, when we need our loved ones with us more than ever," Joe Solmonese, president of the Human Rights Campaign, said in a statement praising the president's decision.
Obama's mandate is the latest attempt by his administration to advance the agenda of a constituency that strongly supported his presidential campaign.
In his first 15 months in office, he has hailed the passage of hate crime legislation and held the first Gay Pride Day celebration at the White House. Last month, Obama's top military and defense officials testified before Congress in favor of repealing of the "don't ask, don't tell" policy for gays in the armed forces.
But the moves have been too slow for some gay rights activists, who have urged the president to be more vocal and active in championing their causes. John Aravosis, a prominent Gay Blogger, wrote last October that Obama's "track record on keeping his gay promises has been fairly abominable."
Other gay rights activists have defended the administration, while at the same time pushing Congress to act on broader issues such as passage of an employment non-discrimination act and an end to the ban on gays serving openly in the military.
"We see this as part of our ongoing effort to encourage the administration to take action where it has the authority to act," said David Smith, a Human Rights Campaign spokesman. "We've been working and pressing the administration on our legislative agenda. That work continues."
Gay activists have argued for years that recognizing same-sex marriage would ease the stress associated with not being able to visit hospitalized partners.
But opponents of same-sex marriage have called the visitation issue a red herring, arguing that advocates want to provide special rights for gays that other Americans do not have. A spokesman for one group said the president's move was part of a broader effort to appease gays and to undermine the institution of marriage.
"In its current political context, President Obama's memorandum clearly constitutes pandering to a radical special interest group," said Peter S. Sprigg, a senior fellow for policy studies at the Family Research Council. He said that his organization does not object to gays giving their partners power of attorney but that it questions Obama's motives.
"The memorandum undermines the definition of marriage," he said.
Obama's memo to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius orders the development of new rules to ensure that hospitals "respect the rights of patients to designate visitors" and to choose the people who will make medical decisions on their behalf.
The action has the potential to increase conflicts between family members, same-sex partners and hospital staff over end-of-life decisions.
A spokesman for the American Hospital Association did not return calls and e-mails. Efforts to reach a spokesman for the Catholic Health Association of the United States were unsuccessful.
In the memo, Obama said hospitals should not be able to deny visitation privileges on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
"Every day, all across America, patients are denied the kindnesses and caring of a loved one at their sides whether in a sudden medical emergency or a prolonged hospital stay," he wrote.
Affected, he said, are "gay and lesbian Americans who are often barred from the bedsides of the partners with whom they may have spent decades of their lives -- unable to be there for the person they love, and unable to act as a legal surrogate if their partner is incapacitated."
Officials said Obama had been moved by the story of a lesbian couple in Florida, Janice Langbehn and Lisa Pond, who were kept apart when Pond collapsed of a cerebral aneurysm in February 2007, dying hours later at a hospital without her partner and children by her side.
Obama called Langbehn on Thursday evening from Air Force One as he flew to Miami, White House officials said. In an interview, Langbehn praised the president for his actions.
"I kept saying it's not a gay right to hold someone's hand when they die, its a human right," she said, noting that she and Pond had been partners for almost 18 years. "Now to have the president call up and say he agrees with me, it's pretty amazing, and very humbling."
The new rules will not apply only to gays. They also will affect widows and widowers who have been unable to receive visits from a friend or companion. And they would allow members of some religious orders to designate someone other than a family member to make medical decisions.
But it is clear that the document focuses on gays. A number of areas remain in which federal law requires proof of marriage, including receiving Social Security benefits and in taxes.
"The General Accounting Office has identified 1,138 instances in federal law where marriage is important," said one gay rights activist, who spoke on the condition of anonymity before the White House formally announced the directive. "We've knocked off one of them."
Russia threatened to suspend all child adoptions by U.S. families Friday after a 7-year-old boy adopted by a woman from Tennessee was sent alone on a one-way flight back to Moscow with a note saying he was violent and had severe psychological problems.
The boy, Artyom Savelyev, was put on a plane by his adopted grandmother, Nancy Hansen of Shelbyville.
"He drew a picture of our house burning down and he'll tell anybody that he's going to burn our house down with us in it," she told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "It got to be where you feared for your safety. It was terrible."
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov called the actions by the grandmother "the last straw" in a string of U.S. adoptions gone wrong, including three in which Russian children had died in the U.S.
'A monstrous deed'
In an exclusive interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos, President Dmitry Medvedev said the boy "fell into a very bad family."
"It is a monstrous deed on the part of his adoptive parents, to take the kid and virtually throw him out with the airplane in the opposite direction and to say, 'I'm sorry I could not cope with it, take everything back' is not only immoral but also against the law," Medvedev said.
The cases have prompted outrage in Russia, where foreign adoption failures are reported prominently. Russian main TV networks ran extensive reports on the latest incident in their main evening news shows.
The Russian education ministry immediately suspended the license of the group involved in the adoption — the World Association for Children and Parents, a Renton, Washington-based agency — for the duration of an investigation. In Tennessee, authorities were investigating the adoptive mother, Torry Hansen, 33.
Any possible freeze could affect hundreds of American families. Last year, nearly 1,600 Russian children were adopted in the United States, and more than 60,000 Russian orphans have been successfully adopted there, according to the National Council For Adoption, a U.S. adoption advocacy nonprofit group.
"We're obviously very troubled by it," U.S. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley said in Washington when asked about the boy's case. He told reporters the U.S. and Russia share a responsibility for the child's safety and Washington will work closely with Moscow to make sure adoptions are legal and appropriately monitored.
Asked if he thought a suspension by Russia was warranted, Crowley said, "If Russia does suspend cooperation on the adoption, that is its right. These are Russian citizens."
"Child abandonment of any kind is reprehensible," said Chuck Johnson, acting CEO of the National Council For Adoption. "The actions of this mother are especially troubling because an already vulnerable, innocent child has been further victimized."
Letter details psychological problems
The boy arrived unaccompanied in Moscow on a United Airlines flight on Thursday from Washington. Social workers sent him to a Moscow hospital for a health checkup and criticized his adoptive mother for abandoning him.
The Kremlin children's rights office said the boy was carrying a letter from his adoptive mother saying she was returning him due to severe psychological problems.
"This child is mentally unstable. He is violent and has severe psychopathic issues," the letter said. "I was lied to and misled by the Russian Orphanage workers and director regarding his mental stability and other issues. ...
"After giving my best to this child, I am sorry to say that for the safety of my family, friends, and myself, I no longer wish to parent this child."
The boy was adopted in September from the town of Partizansk in Russia's Far East.
Nancy Hansen, the grandmother, told The Associated Press that she and the boy flew to Washington and she put the child on the plane with the note from her daughter. She vehemently rejected assertions of child abandonment by Russian authorities, saying he was watched over by a United Airlines stewardess and the family paid a man $200 to pick the boy up at the Moscow airport and take him to the Russian Education and Science Ministry.
Nancy Hansen said a social worker checked on the boy in January and reported to Russian authorities that there were no problems. But after that, the grandmother said incidents of hitting, kicking, spitting began to escalate, along with threats.
Grandmother: Mother lied to
She said she and her daughter went to Russia together to adopt the boy, and she believes information about his behavioral problems was withheld from her daughter.
"The Russian orphanage officials completely lied to her because they wanted to get rid of him," Nancy Hansen said.
She said the boy was very skinny when they picked him up, and he told them he had been beaten with a broom handle at the orphanage.
Joseph LaBarbera, a clinical psychologist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, said adoptive parents are many times not aware of the psychological state of children put up for adoption.
"Parents enter into it (foreign adoption) with positive motivations but, in a sense, they are a little bit blindsided by their desire to adopt," said LaBarbera, who specializes in the Psychological evaluation of children and has worked with a number of children adopted from Russia and other foreign countries.
"They're not prepared to appreciate, psychologically, the kinds of conditions these kids have been exposed to and the effect it has had on them."
Russian state television showed the child in a yellow jacket holding the hands of two chaperones as he left a police precinct and entered a van bound for a Moscow medical clinic.
The U.S. ambassador to Russia, John Beyrle, said he was "deeply shocked by the news" and "very angry that any family would act so callously toward a child that they had legally adopted."
Anna Orlova, a spokeswoman for Kremlin's Children Rights Commissioner, told The Associated Press that she visited the boy and he told her that his mother was "bad," "did not love him," and used to pull his hair.
Russian officials said he turned up at the door of the Russian Education and Science Ministry on Thursday afternoon accompanied by a Russian man who handed over the boy and his documents, then left, officials said. The child holds a Russian passport.
Rob Johnson, a spokesman for the Tennessee Department of Children's Services, said the agency is looking into Friday's allegations, although it does not handle international adoptions.
Bedford County Sheriff Randall Boyce also said Torry Hansen was under investigation, but he hasn't interviewed the Hansens because their lawyer has advised them not to talk.
Lavrov said his ministry would recommend that the U.S. and Russia hammer out an agreement before any new adoptions are allowed.
"We have taken the decision ... to suggest a freeze on any adoptions to American families until Russia and the U.S.A. sign an international agreement" on the conditions for adoptions, Lavrov said.
He said the U.S. had refused to negotiate such an accord in the past but "the recent event was the last straw."
Pavel Astakhov, the children rights commissioner, said in a televised interview that a treaty is vital to protect Russian citizens in other countries.
"How can we prosecute a person who abused the rights of a Russian child abroad? If there was an adoption treaty in place, we would have legal means to protect Russian children abroad," he said.
Timeline compiled from court and prison records and interviews with family members and police:
NOV. 4, 1993: Tiffany Wright is born in Buffalo, N.Y.
1995-1996: At age 2, Tiffany is put in Foster Care in Buffalo, N.Y., with Alma Wright, who later adopts her.
1999: Royce Mitchell, Wright's grown son, is indicted in Buffalo and later convicted in connection with a drug trafficking operation.
NOV. 2003: Mitchell is indicted in a 1998 murder but acquitted at trial.
2004: Wright and Tiffany move to Kings Mountain.
APRIL 2007: Mitchell is released from federal prison and is under four years' post-release supervision. He moves to Charlotte and gets a job as a city street maintenance worker.
JAN. 25, 2009: Wright dies of natural causes at age 77.
JAN. 30, 2009: Tiffany's adoptive brother, Mitchell, seeks to become her legal guardian.
JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2009: Tiffany gets pregnant.
FEB. 5: N.C. Court appoints Mitchell as temporary guardian.
FEB. 27: A court orders a home study of Mitchell's household. Tiffany is soon placed in foster care again.
JULY 27: Charlotte DSS reports allegation of statutory rape by Mitchell, police say.
AUG. 19: Charlotte Police Detectives interview Tiffany.
AUG. 20: CMPD detective Teresa Johnson leaves message for Mitchell to come talk to police. When he doesn't respond, she phones social workers and a probation officer over the next two weeks to get the message to Mitchell.
FRIDAY, SEPT. 11: Detectives leave a message for Mitchell's wife, asking her to call back to talk about Tiffany.
MONDAY, SEPT. 14: Tiffany is shot and killed at her school bus stop. Her daughter, named Aaliyah, is delivered at Carolinas Medical Center. Mitchell is arrested and charged with statutory rape and taking indecent liberties with a child.
SUNDAY: Baby Aaliyah dies after a week in critical condition.
Tiffany Wright stood alone in the dark, waiting for her school bus.
It was just before 6 a.m., and her foster grandmother had walked back home to get Tiffany's water bottle.
Tiffany, 15, was eight months pregnant but determined to stay on track in school. She wanted to be a lawyer. And after just a few weeks at Hawthorne High, she had impressed teachers as smart and ambitious, despite a difficult childhood.
At 5:51, Tiffany sent a text.
"Wheres the bus?"
One stop away, replied her friend, already on the bus.
At 5:55, as the bus lumbered toward Tiffany's stop, people began calling police to report gunshots.
A school bus dispatcher radioed Tiffany's bus driver: Change course - something's happening ahead.
Tiffany lay dead in the road, shot in the head, that morning, Monday, Sept. 14. Her baby girl was delivered at the hospital and lived a week, but died Sunday.
Nobody's charged in the killings, but police call Tiffany's adoptive brother, Royce Mitchell, a "person of interest."
In the months before she died, local agencies took steps aimed at stabilizing her home life and keeping her safe. But her story exposes failures in Charlotte's DSS System that was supposed to protect her.
Among the missteps:
•In February, a Charlotte-Mecklenburg court clerk appointed Mitchell as Tiffany's temporary guardian - even though he was a felon who served time in federal prison. He was also tried in 2006 for murder, but found not guilty. And last year, he was accused of domestic violence, though the case was dismissed.
•In July, Charlotte DSS Workers told police that Mitchell, 36, might have committed statutory rape with Tiffany, but police didn't question him about it for seven weeks, and didn't charge him with the rape until after Tiffany was killed.
•This month, Mecklenburg social services failed to cut off communication between Tiffany, who was in foster care, and Mitchell, said a source close to the investigation.
On the day of Tiffany's killing, Charlotte-Mecklenburg police jailed Mitchell for statutory rape and indecent liberties with a child, naming Tiffany as the victim.
Police defend their work, saying they followed the industry's best practices - which takes time. Police didn't feel a need to rush, they say, because they believed Tiffany was secure, hidden in a foster home with no threat to her safety.
Police say it's hard to prove statutory rape: Of the 262 reports of statutory rape police received over three years, only 16 percent - 42 cases - were accepted by prosecutors.
Experts say statutory rape cases are complicated because they involve victims ages 13, 14 or 15 who often consider themselves voluntary participants in sex with someone at least six years older. So victims can be reluctant to help police.
But child advocates say in cases like Tiffany's, police should act more aggressively. An immediate arrest sends a signal to a suspect and can persuade them to stay away from victims.
"The cases may be difficult to win, but they're not difficult to charge," says Brett Loftis of Charlotte's Council for Children's Rights.
UNCC criminologist Paul Friday says: "Often, nothing is done in these kinds of cases because they're based on improper assumptions about the rationality of someone that age. But the minors are often unaware of disease, birth control and they can be exploited by someone."
Adopted by Foster Care Mother
Tiffany first entered the child welfare system as a toddler in Buffalo, N.Y., when her mother lost custody.
She was adopted at 4 by her foster mother, Alma Wright, an older woman with eight grown children, who was excited about raising another child.
One of Wright's grown sons was Royce Mitchell, a star quarterback in high school who'd gone on to play for a semi-pro team in Buffalo. But Mitchell also was indicted in 1999 as part of a drug trafficking ring and went to federal prison.
While he was in prison, authorities also charged Mitchell with an earlier murder, but a jury found him not guilty.
In 2004, Alma and Tiffany left Buffalo for North Carolina, settling near Kings Mountain. Tiffany made friends easily at school and church. She ran track at Bessemer City High School.
In 2007, Mitchell was released from prison and followed his mother to North Carolina.
But last fall, Alma Wright got sick. Friends at church helped out with Tiffany, inviting her for dinners and weekends. Tiffany spent time with Mitchell and his wife, too.
Alma Wright died Jan. 25, and Tiffany moved in with the Mitchells in Charlotte.
On Jan. 30, Royce Mitchell asked a Mecklenburg court to appoint him and his wife as Tiffany's guardians.
On his application, he wrote: "We are seeking guardianship because we were requested to do so by Mrs. Alma Wright before she died."
He wanted to transfer Tiffany to West Mecklenburg High School.
The court set a hearing for Feb. 5 and appointed a child advocate to study the situation and look after Tiffany's best interests in court.
There's no transcript of what happened in court, and the clerk who handled Tiffany's case declined to discuss his decision.
Frederick Benson, a Mecklenburg assistant clerk of superior court, appointed Mitchell the temporary guardian of Tiffany's welfare.
It's unclear if Benson, a lawyer, knew about Mitchell's criminal background. Court clerks are not required to perform background checks in guardianship cases, says Clerk of Superior Court Martha Curran. It's up to each clerk to decide what checks are necessary, and they often rely on court-appointed child advocates to advise them in such cases.
Tiffany's advocate, lawyer Martha Efird, declined to discuss her actions in the case.
It was in the weeks surrounding the Feb. 5 court hearing that Tiffany got pregnant, if hospital estimates are accurate.
But friends say Tiffany, who started at West Mecklenburg High in February, wouldn't realize for four or five months that she was pregnant.
On Feb. 27, clerk of court Benson ordered DSS to conduct a "home study" of the Mitchell household. Officials won't release their findings.
But Mitchell didn't keep custody long, according to several of Tiffany's friends in King's Mountain.
In late March, Mitchell left Tiffany at a group home called With Friends in Gastonia, according to Marlene Jefferies and Cruceta Jeffeirs, two adult family friends who watched Tiffany grow up.
The group home wouldn't confirm that. But the friends say the home reported to social services that Tiffany was abandoned. And she was soon back in foster care.
On March 31, Jeffeirs, a Shelby pastor, wrote a letter to Benson seeking custody of Tiffany: "My desire is to see Tiffany accomplish all the goals that she has set for herself and I believe she can do that in a stable environment with lots of guidance and love."
DSS officials in Gaston and Mecklenburg won't discuss Tiffany's case or answer questions about what steps they took to protect her.
But friends and family say Tiffany was eventually placed in the care of foster parent Susan Barber, in a townhome off Mallard Creek Road in Derita.
By July, it was clear Tiffany was pregnant, friends say.
Barber tried to shield Tiffany from talking to those she believed might be bad influences, according to Tiffany's cousin Brittany Page. But a source close to the investigation said Tiffany and Mitchell continued communicating.
Despite repeated attempts, Barber could not be reached.
As the school year approached, Tiffany prepared to change schools again, this time to Hawthorne High in Charlotte, which offers a special program for pregnant students.
Delayed investigation
On July 27, social workers reported to police that Royce Mitchell might have committed statutory rape with Tiffany.
It took eight days for a detective to look at the case, and three days more for it to be officially assigned to Teresa Johnson, a detective with CMPD's youth crime and domestic violence unit.
Another 12 days passed before Johnson interviewed Tiffany.
It's unclear when detective Johnson discovered Mitchell's background, but it wasn't enough to ramp up the investigation. Investigators say they believed Tiffany was safe in a foster home and faced no threats from Mitchell.
Police say their performance in the case followed procedure and met standards.
Police interview alleged victims immediately if the crime has occurred within the previous 72 hours, so they can gather evidence that may remain. But in cases like Tiffany's - where months had elapsed since the alleged offense - police try to arrange just one interview when children and teen victims of abuse are involved.
Police acknowledge that strategy takes time but minimizes trauma and reduces the chances that young victims might be led into inaccurate testimony by repeated questioning.
Police also let such victims decide when they want to be interviewed at the county's child-victim center called Pat's Place. There, specially trained interviewers talk to victims, while social workers, psychologists, police and others watch from another room.
Tiffany chose an Aug. 19 interview. She didn't say much during the formal interview. But later that day, Johnson won her trust and obtained enough information to move forward with the investigation.
No response from Mitchell
The next day, Aug. 20, the detective made her first call to Mitchell to ask him about the charge, she says. Johnson left a message and gave him a few days to call back.
When Mitchell didn't respond, she made calls over the next two weeks to social workers and a federal probation officer to ask Mitchell to come talk to police.
Police say they didn't immediately arrest him because they believed they could get better information if he talked voluntarily.
On Sept. 9, a federal probation official told Johnson that Mitchell was not coming in.
On Sept. 10, a team of social workers, police and other agencies held a standard follow-up meeting to discuss how to proceed in Tiffany's case.
On Friday, Sept. 11, detective Johnson phoned Mitchell's wife and left a message. She asked her to call back to discuss Tiffany, Johnson says, but didn't give details of the rape allegation.
That Monday, Tiffany was shot and killed.
As emergency vehicles rolled to the scene, Tiffany's school bus was diverted from its normal route. But the students could see flashing lights. Tiffany's friends on the bus, Cimone Black and Tamia Corpening, began to worry.
"I kept texting her phone...," Cimone said. Then she started calling, but all she got was voice mail.
The bus continued on to Hawthorne. For Tamia, the hourlong ride was excruciating.
A Greenville state Senate candidate who has made an issue of the state's overpayment of mental health claims is himself on the hook for $4.2 million in Medicaid overcharges for services provided by his family's company.
Frankie Bordeaux and his wife, Hattie Faye Hardy Bordeaux, signed a settlement with the state in February that included a two-year repayment plan for money improperly collected by Cambridge Behavioral Health Services in Greenville. The first monthly payment, $241,296, was due this month.
An investigation of Cambridge by the state Medicaid office found hundreds of cases of incomplete patient records, "several instances of potential fraud," duplicate or "canned" notes, and unqualified staff delivering care, according to the settlement.
Of 476 records reviewed, the office found 428 cases in which patients were served at unauthorized sites, 366 instances in which the staff was not qualified to provide the service offered, and hundreds of other discrepancies with their records. The review found problems with nearly 95 percent of the company's claims.
Groups under scrutiny
For the last several years, the state has been cracking down on providers of a mental health service called community support.
Companies came under scrutiny when government auditors found they were treating people who did not need help and were billing for work they didn't do. Legislators last year decided to phase out most of that program.
The $4.2 million deal with Cambridge is the second-highest settlement with a mental health company in the last four years, according to the Medicaid office.
The case was sent to the Medicaid Investigations Unit in the state attorney general's office. An investigation is under way.
Bordeaux said he is not an example of the mess he has pledged to clean up.
"I am not part of the problem," Bordeaux said. "While my name is associated, tied to it, it has nothing to do with me running for this seat."
Bordeaux, who incorporated the company that became Cambridge with his wife, is not an owner, his lawyer said. Bordeaux said he is now the administrative director, in charge of human resources and the business office.
Fighting NC Corruption
Bordeaux, a Democrat, is challenging incumbent Sen. Clark Jenkins in a primary in the district covering Edgecombe, Martin and Pitt counties.
He has made fighting government corruption a cornerstone of his campaign, even criticizing the state Department of Health and Human Services for its overpayments to companies such as his that offer community mental health services.
"Like most citizens, I am growing weary of news headlines documenting public corruption and scandal in our state government," says a statement on his campaign Web site.
"Graft, corruption and scandal are not acceptable and politicians and bureaucrats who personally benefit from their service - need to be prosecuted and punished," the statement continues. "Furthermore, we must do more to hold bureaucrats and government officials accountable for their actions."
Jenkins, who is seeking a fifth term, has always faced a Democratic primary opponent.
Bordeaux has tried to paint Jenkins, a longtime friend of Senate leader Marc Basnight and a former state Department of Transportation member, as out of touch with the district.
The wrong location
Bordeaux said most of Cambridge's problems resulted from the company's serving clients in unauthorized offices.
Cambridge was serving patients from offices in Rocky Mount before the company discovered it needed clearance from the local mental health office to operate from those locations, Bordeaux said.
Local mental health offices must endorse providers and their locations.
Each location gets a separate billing number, so that local offices can track which providers are working in their regions.
In October 2008, a local mental health office in Rocky Mount reviewed Cambridge's records and directed the company to stop taking new patients from its area. But Cambridge continued to do so through December 2009, according to a letter from the local office.
The legal settlement says that Cambridge presented bills for the patients as though they were being treated from the Greenville office, rather than from Rocky Mount.
Not the owner
James Jorgensen, a Raleigh lawyer representing Cambridge, said situation was the result of poor communication between the company and the local mental health office, which is called the Beacon Center. "I think Cambridge misunderstood what the Beacon Center requested of them," he said.
Jorgensen wanted to make it clear that Frankie Bordeaux does not own the company.
Only Bordeaux's wife is listed on the most recent business incorporation papers. She holds the title of manager. Bordeaux signed earlier versions of the business filings and was an incorporator, with his wife, of Cambridge Behavioral Health's precursor, Child & Adolescent Counseling Services Inc.
Cambridge denied in the settlement that it committed abuse or fraud.
"If we had litigated, we could have shown a lot of things that could have been rebutted," Jorgensen said.
Brad Crone, head of the Raleigh campaign firm Bordeaux hired, said Jenkins tried use the settlement to push Bordeaux out of the race.
Jenkins said he never used the settlement to pressure Bordeaux not to run.
"I do not intend to get in the mud with that," Jenkins said. "I did not do it."
Democratic Mayor Sheila Dixon won't be the only Political Leader resigning from Public Office due to acts of Public Corruption.
Within the next year or two perhaps sooner, some Charlotte-Mecklenburg Politicians' heads will roll too.
Upon checking out some of the articles below you'll learn why Charlotte-Mecklenburg Leaders and local DSS Officials are currently being investigated by the Feds and a Grand Jury for Embezzlement of Federal funds, Misuse of money Federally allocated for Foster Care Children, Misuse of money Federally allocated for Homelessness Prevention, Misuse of money Federally allocated for Medicaid and Mental Health Treatment, Breaking ABC Alcohol laws, etc.,
Now do you understand why I predict that Dixon's fall from grace won't be the only fall?
Especially Black Politicians, just because we have a Black President in the White House doesn't give you permission to steal from Taxpayers and the less fortunate.
After more than four years of investigation, and a month after a guilty verdict in the first corruption trial against her, Baltimore Mayor Sheila Dixon agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors Wednesday in which she pledged to resign from office.
The move ends – temporarily at least – the public career of the city’s first female mayor and a longtime force in Baltimore politics. It also concludes a political and legal drama that has consumed the city for months.
“Today is a sad day,” Mayor Dixon said at a late afternoon press conference, unusually choked up for a woman who has long projected a tough-as-nails public image. “It is a cloud. But the sun comes out.”
An Alford plea
Earlier in the day, Dixon had entered an Alford plea to one count of perjury – a charge related to prosecutors’ assertion that she had failed to disclose gifts from her former boyfriend and prominent Baltimore developer, Ronald Lipscomb. The Alford plea means that although Dixon does not admit guilt, she recognizes that prosecutors have enough evidence to convict her.
Mr. Lipscomb’s gifts were to be the subject of a trial scheduled to begin in March. Last month, in a separate trial, a jury convicted the mayor of taking for her own use gift cards donated for the city’s poor.
Under Wednesday’s agreement, prosecutors asked the court to strike last month’s guilty verdict and give Dixon probation before judgment – a legal status that means the mayor does not have a criminal conviction. She will serve no jail time, keep her $83,000 a year pension and after two years will be able to run again for office.
In return, the mayor has pledged to step down from office as of Feb. 4. Dixon will also receive four years of unsupervised probation, contribute 500 hours of community service, and donate $45,000 to charity.
'A very, very favorable deal'
Prosecutors explained their decision to plea bargain with the mayor – despite apparent tactical advantages – as being the best course of action for the city.
“It was time for this litigation to end and for the city of Baltimore to move forward with a new mayor,” said State Prosecutor Robert Rohrbaugh.
Legal experts said the plea deal was about as advantageous an outcome as the mayor could expect, given her conviction last month.
“It is a very, very favorable deal for her,” said University of Baltimore School of Law professor Byron Warnken. “It so happens that a very good deal for her is a good deal for the city.”
Dixon said that she and her staff would work to ease the transition to the next administration, which will be headed by City Council President Stephanie Rawlings Blake.
“I love this city,” Dixon said. “I love the people of this city. And I am committed to this city in whatever capacity or talent that God has called me to continue to do.… What I owe the citizens is to move on and bring closure to this so we can continue to stay focused on the city.”
State Alcohol Law Enforcement agents said Tuesday the Mecklenburg County ABC Board and liquor company Diageo broke state laws at a holiday dinner for the board where guests sipped Dom Perignon and the company picked up the officials' $9,334 tab.
The report also details several other meals for Mecklenburg board members or employees paid for by liquor companies. One distiller treated board Chair Parks Helms and CEO Calvin McDougal to lunch at the Ritz Carlton the day before the Nov. 18 dinner at Del Frisco's steakhouse.
At Del Frisco's, attendees dined on lobster, steak and crabcakes, according to the report.
The $12,700 bill, which also covered a handful of liquor industry representatives, included $1,000 for Dom Perignon Brut 1998 champagne, $820 for Crown Royal, $599 for Don Julio tequila and nearly $1,800 for wine.
A Diageo official told investigators he has treated employees of other local ABC boards from Asheville to Wilmington.
Agents accused the Mecklenburg board of accepting illegal gifts and Diageo and its marketing director with providing the gifts and unlawfully entering an ABC store for reasons other than business. All are civil offenses.
While saving money on the state's over-budget Medicaid program for the poor is laudable, trying to reach that goal by pushing no-bid service contracts can be a risky proposition.
With the General Assembly's blessing, the Department of Health and Human Services can circumvent, for six months, the competitive bid process. The rationale is that quickly finalizing contracts will help generate substantial savings during the recession.
However, that gives DHHS way too much discretion without sufficient oversight. Unless the agency's clients are properly served, any money saved will be a hollow accomplishment.
And questions are being asked about the $33 million Medicaid diabetes supplies pact with a company that relocated to Charlotte from Florida, where it left a trail of questionable business practices, lawsuits and bankruptcy.
Equally troubling are complaints from health professionals that Prodigy Diabetes Care's glucose testing meters may be confusing and less accurate than some other models. They fear that unless people enrolled in the program receive proper training, some may put off testing, which could lead to serious, costly health issues.
Letting contracts under a veil of secrecy inevitably leads to questions. Did the state get the best deal possible? What went into the decision-making process? Could another vendor have provided a superior product or service for less, had it also been notified? There's no way of knowing.
According to The News & Observer of Raleigh, a protesting competitor contends that the no-bid procedure clearly violates federal Medicaid rules. That ought to be easy enough for the state to determine - and promptly.
Ideally, heightened transparency should compensate when competition lags. But despite rumblings that this deal included a Prodigy promise to move production from China to Charlotte and create 150 jobs, the contract lacks specific incentives.
Even if company officials can adequately explain past problems, enough red flags are waving to justify closer DHHS scrutiny and proceeding cautiously. To protect taxpayers, checks and balances need to be in place.
State contracts first must assure clients that they're getting the highest level of service from reliable providers. Opening the process to all qualified bidders is the best way of doing it. To do otherwise understandably raises fears of favoritism and abuse.
A grand jury is investigating the Mecklenburg County Department of Social Services, which has faced scrutiny over accounting practices and spending since early this year, two county commissioners said Monday.
Commissioner George Dunlap said the grand jury has been looking into whether crimes were committed by employees.
Commissioner Bill James said board members were told last month that a federal grand jury is investigating. He refused further comment on the topic, saying commissioners were instructed by a county attorney not to discuss specifics.
The county ordered an audit of the Giving Tree after a DSS employee raised questions about spending at the Christmas charity for needy children. The county discovered checks written out to a county employee who volunteered with the program, as well as money issued to the sister of another employee.
County spokesman Danny Diehl said officials cannot confirm whether a federal grand jury is involved, but said the county "is cooperating with law enforcement to complete the investigation."
The county has asked Charlotte-Mecklenburg police to investigate.
A police spokesperson on Monday said their work is ongoing. Other commissioners reached Monday would not comment on work by authorities.
"I want the investigation to have the best possible outcome, said board Chair Jennifer Roberts. "So I am unable to discuss it in the interest of not impeding the work of law enforcement."
In the meantime, James and fellow Republican commissioners Karen Bentley and Neil Cooksey want the county board to meet next week to learn more about ongoing probes.
"There are facts we don't have," James said. "I am just concerned there is stuff even senior management doesn't know."
Diehl said the county will respond to any questions the board has about the DSS audits. "The board has received reports and been briefed on all aspects of the DSS audits that are available to the county manager and staff."
The developments follow Observer stories on Sunday detailing a 74-page memo from a former county employee who headed the Giving Tree. Cindy Brady, who retired from the county in August, wrote she was never given a chance to talk at length about how the charity worked, despite requests to do so.
Brady said the county advanced her as much as $198,000 since 2005 with the approval of her supervisors. Brady said she spent the money on gifts for needy children, but says she did not collect all of her receipts, and some were handwritten or lost. County leaders say they can account for how about $162,000 was spent by the Giving Tree last year.
But audit reports acknowledge numerous problems with receipts and other documents to track expenses and cited inadequate oversight and controls of the program by management.
The county has announced a number of changes in response to the charity audit and reviews of other DSS spending, including putting department finances under control of the county finance office and re-training DSS employees in financial practices and procedures.
The agency employs about 1,200, with a current annual budget of $176 million.
Brady's memo, dated July 29 and sent to a human resources manager, criticized county investigators for not interviewing her during the audit investigation. The county's former Internal Audit Director Cornita Spears said she first read the memo last month, and it led her to revise her earlier report to include about $33,000 Brady said she returned to the county earlier this year.
County Manager Harry Jones suspended Spears last month over the error.
Why James wants meeting
James cited the Observer story in explaining his reasons for calling the new discussions on DSS. He said he wants to give disgruntled employees a venue to air grievances. For months, James said, commissioners have been deluged with anonymous complaint letters from people who only identify themselves as current and former agency workers.
Some apparently won't divulge their names because they fear retaliation from superiors, James said.
The proposal requests that the board discuss the DSS issues on Dec. 17, with portions of the meeting to be held behind closed doors. It asks that DSS Director Mary Wilson appear to the meeting, and that other department employees be made available.
It also requests that former Giving Tree employees be invited to talk, including former county general manager Janice Allen Jackson, who briefly led DSS on an interim basis until Wilson was hired last year.
Neither Jackson nor Brady could be reached for comment Monday.
The proposal also wants Jones to provide in open session a detailed list of gifts bought with Giving Tree money and information on all items from the charity now in county inventory.
It also asks for copies of all internal memos produced by internal audit and county management involving the Giving Tree.
The county publicly released a three-page report in June and a follow-up report last month. The Observer has requested a longer report by Spears multiple times since July, but the county has said personnel laws bar them from releasing the document.
In order to hold the Dec. 17 meeting, at least five commissioners would have to agree. At least two of the six Democrats would have to sign on.
Roberts, Dunlap and Vilma Leake said they want to hear more about what the commissioners are trying to accomplish in holding the meeting before they can decide whether to support it. However, Roberts questioned whether meeting in closed session was the best approach, and said she is "distressed" that the board Republicans did not talk to her before putting the item on next week's agenda.
Dumont Clarke said he's inclined "to be as transparent and public as possible about this issue and do as little as possible behind closed doors."
Commissioners Harold Cogdell and Dan Murrey did not respond to requests for comments.
Cooksey said his constituents are demanding the board take a "more active role in getting to the bottom of this." Cooksey disagreed with commissioners who have said they county is spending too much time on the issue and should not look into anonymous complaints.
"When you have issues swirling around, you can't ignore it," Cooksey said. "We have an obligation to see if these allegations have any truth to them or not."
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