Until last October, there were no limits on what guardians could charge Medicaid. Cecil said he doesn't know how many guardian cases are subsidized by Medicaid. And no one knows how many companies are getting out of the business. State Sen. Robert Geake, R-North ville, said no one objected to the cap when the Appropriations Subcommittee on Social Services, which he heads, held hearings on the issue last year. As the practice of appointing guardians has grown, I became concerned that the cost was getting out of hand and that many guardians were performing minimum services for the high fees that they were billing the state.
Guardians acknowledge that taxpayers have been gouged at times.
Phoebe Corry, president of Guardian Care, a nonprofit guardian agency in Detroit, said some abused the system and overcharged. For people like Brenda Fails, a resident at Detroit's Westwood Nursing Center, the cap has been a blow. Until two months ago, a Guardian Angel social worker visited Fails each week to review her medical charts and attended the nursing home's quarterly meetings on Fails' care. The firm prepared reports on her care. It also brought Fails donated clothes, paid to have her hair styled and treated her to occasional packs of Newports, her favorite cigarettes.