Emails re Lauren Rainey not getting through to Medicaid

Apparently, no one at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services is getting to hear wants to hear about Lauren Rainey.

I’ve received emails from people who tried and failed to contact Medicaid chief Dr. Mark McClellan and other officials to register their concern over Medicaid’s threat to terminate - or, at best, to drastically reduce - the nursing care she needs. These folks reported that their emails were rejected; in all cases, the stated reason was that “a Worm Virus was detected” in the correspondents’ emails.

These correspondents maintain that their computers are free of any viruses or worms. An alternate explanation for the rejections is that they are deliberate: the result of mail filtering designed to block the messages regarding Lauren Rainey from reaching their intended recipients.

A third possibility is that CMS’ antivirus software is really, really bad.

On the main Lauren page here, I have posted telephone and mailing address information for each of the seven Medicaid officials, and I strongly urge everyone to make use of this info should your email be rejected. I know that it is not as nearly as convenient as email. I ask that you not let this deter you from voicing your concern over Lauren’s situation.

For those who would like to continue with an email approach in addition to calling or writing letters, I suggest that you try not using Lauren’s name in the subject field. The filter (or really, really bad antivirus software) may be more sophisticated than that…but perhaps not. Leaving Lauren’s name out of the subject field doesn’t help; the emails are still rejected. Most likely, the filter rejects any email with her name anywhere in the message body.

Again: the alternate contact info is here.