Posted on 10/17/2013 7:06:14 PM PDT by Pan_Yan
Georgia has become the first state to charge a fee to low-income people who receive free cellphone service through a federal program, saying the move would combat fraud.
The Georgia Public Service Commission voted 3-2 Tuesday to approve a $5-a-month charge on participants in the Lifeline program, which is designed to ensure low-income households have access to basic communications services.
Georgia Public Service Commissioner Doug Everett, who proposed the rule, said the program's structure encourages wireless providers to sign up as many customers as possible to rake in taxpayer-funded subsidies, without first verifying their eligibility. Each eligible household is supposed to get only one phone with free service.
Mr. Everett, a Republican, said his rule was motivated as much by carriers' aggressive sales tactics as by consumer abuse. "I believe the program is broken," he said. "We found multiple phones in the same household because no one is verifying or checking information."
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
Yes, I’d like to see revocation of voter registration upon 3 consecutive years of being on government “assistance”.
Fraud and waste on a govt program. Hard to believe. :-)
States will almost always go after the providers and never the welfare recipient fraudsters, Go after both of them!
The articles I have read lead me to the same conclusion. At $5 (which ain’t all that much), the end user will have some skin in the game
Under the new rule, participating carriers in Georgia must bill Lifeline consumers $5 every month starting Jan. 31, or provide them with 500 minutes of call time per month.They'll go with the 500 minutes.
our “leaders” are insane
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