A MedicaidforHBOT denial

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From

http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/News/St.+Louis+City+%2F+County

/D9A8EAAFBA99D75386256E72006F6201?OpenDocument & Headline=Charges+are+considered+i

n+emaciation & highlight=2%2Cbenko

Charges are considered in emaciation

D. " Danny " Benko, an emaciated teenager from Michigan who weighs just

40 pounds, is showing improvement in a St. Louis hospital as authorities

investigate his mother for possible neglect.

Danny, 16, of Niles, Mich., was upgraded to serious condition at Cardinal

Glennon Children's Hospital, where he was receiving intravenous fluids

Friday. He was being kept in isolation due to an infection but is out of

the intensive care unit, a spokesman said.

Danny's case of severe malnutrition was so bad that his bones pushed

against his skin, and an emergency room doctor likened the boy to someone

in a concentration camp. He suffers from cerebral palsy, brain damage and

frequent seizures.

Michigan State Police, who released the names of the mother and son, said

criminal charges may be filed against the boy's mother, Lora Benko, on

Monday or Tuesday, once the prosecutor has a chance to review the report.

Police in Michigan were astonished at the boy's condition, even though they

have not seen the boy in person.

" We saw digital photos of the boy taken by St. Louis authorities, " said

Trooper McCarthy, a detective with the Michigan State Police. " It

was sad. "

The Benko family lives in Niles, a town of about 12,000 in the southwestern

corner of Michigan. It is considered a suburb of South Bend, Ind. The boy

attended a special school there, uses a wheelchair and cannot walk.

Even though Lora Benko has lived there for at least four years, McCarthy

said he knew of no investigation into the boy's care until authorities in

Illinois contacted counterparts in Michigan last week.

Child welfare and hospital officials said Danny ended up at Cardinal

Glennon this way:

Lora Benko was traveling through Illinois with Danny, Danny's younger

brother and a man who Lora Benko said was her brother.

She had gone down to Texas because, she told authorities, she didn't like

the way doctors were treating her son in Michigan. She told social workers

she was traveling through Illinois on her way back to Michigan when she

noticed her son becoming sicker.

She decided to stop at Mount Vernon, Ill., and took Danny to the Good

Samaritan Hospital there. She had noticed her son becoming pale, having a

weak pulse and experiencing breathing problems, sources say.

The Mount Vernon hospital alerted police and a child abuse hot line Monday,

and Danny was transferred by helicopter to St. Louis for care, said Bob

son, Cardinal Glennon's spokesman. In the next one to three weeks,

doctors said, they will slowly will try to work up to reintroducing food.

" It will be a long process because his stomach is constricted, " son said.

The boy is now in protective custody of the Missouri foster care system,

after a hearing Thursday before the St. Louis Family Court. St. Louis

police are monitoring the case because the boy is being treated here, but

their officers are not actively investigating on the assumption that any

neglect occurred elsewhere.

Danny's condition moved nurses, social workers and other hospital workers

to tears.

" They see abuse all the time, horrible scenes, but this was pretty

shocking, " said a woman familiar with the case and who has seen Danny.

" What shocked me is how a child of this age, and this size and unbelievable

condition, could go undetected.

" He looks like a Holocaust victim, " she said.

The boy is more than 5 feet tall, and 40 pounds is an alarmingly low

weight. A healthy 16-year-old should weigh from 120 to 170 pounds.

Danny came to the hospital caked in filth. " Encrusted in dirt, " is how one

source described his appearance. Workers at the Mount Vernon hospital

bathed him twice with a strong medical soap; then, he was bathed twice more

at Cardinal Glennon's emergency room and once again in the intensive care

unit.

The Children's Division of Missouri's Department of Social Services is just

one of the many agencies now looking into Danny's case. Investigators are

checking criminal records, medical records and records of child abuse and

neglect in six states to see what kind of history Danny might have.

The earliest problem apparently occurred in San , Calif., where Danny

had been shaken as a baby, a source said. He has been bedridden since.

Lora Benko told investigators last week that doctors back in California

told her at the time that " there were 14 different ways that could have

happened, " a source said.

Doctors say they found marijuana and methamphetamine in Danny's system this

week, but his mother told social workers she didn't know how that could

have happened. Because of Danny's condition, he cannot feed himself and

would have been unable to take the drugs without help, the source said.

son said Lora Benko told the Cardinal Glennon staff that she was

leaving St. Louis to be with family in Indiana. She told court officials

Thursday that Danny's brother had gone to Indiana to stay with her parents.

Reached by phone Friday night, Lora Benko said she could not comment on her

son's case and referred all questions to her attorney. The lawyer could not

be reached.

The South Bend Tribune mentioned Danny in a July 2000 article about a

small-town fireworks show at the Dowagiac Municipal Airport. The article

mentions how Danny, then 12, smiled and laughed at the fireworks, then how

his father raced him around in a stroller through the airport parking lot.

" It's nice that he's able to get out and do stuff like this, " Lora Benko

told the South Bend newspaper. " Twenty years ago, you never saw kids with

cerebral palsy outside with other people able to get out and do stuff like

this. "

A year later, in July 2001, Lora Benko's efforts to care for her son

appeared on the Internet in the form of a posting in the Michigan

Hyperbaric Forum. What she wrote, to someone called only " , " suggests

she was trying to get her son a new type of treatment.

" , we talked a few months ago about getting my son in for the

treatments, " Lora's posting said. " You said that you would send me your

Medicaid ID number. You forget (sic) to send it with the package that you

sent me. Also, you said to contact you about the cost. As of right now the

only coverage my son has is Medicaid and we just can't afford the cost out

of our pockets.

" I think these treatments could really help him, " her posting continues.

" He has cerebral palsy and is fully involved. He does not walk or talk he

is dependent upon us for everything. If there is the slightest chance that

this can help him be more dependent upon himself then I want to see what we

can do. At this point I don't know if medicaid will pay for this. Is there

any other organization that could help us. I've tried everything down

here. "

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Freels

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Tucker, GA 30084-6714

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