Managed Care - August 2008 - (Page 17) Though they’ve generally been good for the public and the companies that spawned them, these organizations often lack direction or fall prey to government raids. from the Blue Cross of California conversion, have forever changed the lives of needy in that state. In a program called One-e-App, they granted $11 million to groups that jet propelled enrollment in social welfare programs by turning cumbersome, ineffective, multiple 28-page written applications into a 30-minute, error-free, streamlined computer eligibility check, ensuring that far more people in that state receive the services that have long been available to them. In contrast, the smallest health plan conversion foundation, Community Health Partnership in Portland, Ore., with a mere $1.3 million endowment, bought a washing machine for a newly bedridden woman who could no longer trek to a coin laundry. CHP also purchased a Plexiglas window for the family of a child headbanger who cut himself when he plunged through a glass window and required stitches. “[Foundations] can spend the money on whatever they want within the bounds of the law. Federal and state laws are pretty broad,” says Sacramento lawyer and former California Assemblyman Phillip Isenberg, who was directly involved in the formation of the California Endowment and California HealthCare Foundation. To illustrate the fuzziness of their health missions, the Endowment for Health, formed from the PHOTOGRAPH BY FOREST McMULLIN Giving can be tricky. The foundation headed by Ann Monroe once gave $45,000 to a group that wanted to put on plays in schools about health topics — except that the group “couldn’t create all the plays and couldn’t get into the schools.” AUGUST 2008 / MANAGED CARE 17
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