Teen Must Fight for Benefits as Medicaid Contractor Just Says No

Melody and Steve Lancaster’s 16-year-old foster son, who’s paralyzed from the neck down, needed a mechanized ceiling lift to help him get into the bathtub or his favorite beanbag chair.

While Texas Medicaid officials had already paid as much as $13,000 for similar devices for others, the company that the state hired to look after the teenager’s health needs refused. Superior Health, a unit of Centene Corp. that covers about 800,000 Texas Medicaid recipients, also rejected at least two other requests for lifts, state records show. The Lancasters’ foster son and another patient appealed, and won. The third case is pending.