May 8, 2008
What would you do if you had a lot of money. I mean, A LOT OF MONEY. And you wanted to keep it, but you didn’t get it allocated to other agencies in a timely manner and now it has to be sent back to the government funding source.
If only you could come up with some kind of scheme to keep the money in the state, not really use it the way it was intended, but make it appear that way. Then the Feds would think that you are really terrific for trying to use the money wisely to care for people, you wouldn’t have to give it back, AND you could use for other endeavors.
The only problem is that this money has been earmarked for services (by the Feds) for folks with HIV. I guess, if you thought you were really creative, you could make it look like you were using the money to help people with HIV (even though you weren’t).
What kind of plan could this be? Well………..you could check with a database and see who has been reported with HIV Disease and not had any kind of medical services over the past years. You could then locate those people and get them back into service. What a great thing to do! What a great humanitarian effort this could be. The money could go out to the counties who would be helping to locate these people. The Feds would be so proud of us!
BUT…………..what if a group of people that actually worked WITH folks with HIV spoke up and said that the names that were provided by the database were people that, by-and-large, had either died or had moved out of state………..they would NEVER be coming back into care.
The response from the State was: All of these people will be lining up for care! We will find them and help them (and, in the process, not have to send any money back to the Feds).
I think that their vision was of this mass of people lined up and just waiting out there to come back to us so we could spend federal money on them. OR…… they just wanted to keep the money and didn’t really care to see the fallaciousness of the proposed plan about getting people back into care, and therefore refused to discuss this issue with anyone outside of their realm. (Did you know that they refer to themselves as “HIV Services”? Every time I see this or hear it I think of Queen Victoria using the royal “We.” A bit ostentatious or pretentious, I think, but I digress.)
Then, those people working the folks with HIV realized that this whole incredible plan sounds like this one division of a state agency was paying out good money for information that they already had in their possession.
Now I know that it’s just not right; me trying to throw a monkey wrench in this really well thought out plan, but no matter how this plan was explained to me, it sure sounds as though this particular state agency paid out BIG bucks to buy information that they already owned or had access to for FREE.
This sure doesn’t speak very well of the person in charge of this program. I’m wondering why they still have a job.
By the way, we in Northwestern Arkansas saw absolutely NO new people as a result of spending all of this money.