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To some degree, it was.

Ten months ago, he was born to a mother addicted to drugs.

Weeks into his barely begun life, tiny screams from his still-developing lungs pierced the night.

“We were sick to our stomach,� says Levi’s father, Kevin. “He couldn’t sleep. We couldn’t sleep. We were terrified that he could die.�

Levi Moses didn’t die. He’s 10 months old now and doing well. But he is symbolic of a broken system in Missouri that leaves some of the state’s most vulnerable children without access to health care at a time when they need it most.

In the last two years, Missouri has ranked and second among states in the number of children dropped off of Medicaid rolls. More than 50,000 children have lost coverage during that time.

Levi was one of them.

Born to addiction

His story starts Sept. 13 at Mercy Hospital Jefferson in Festus. Levi’s birth mother, who says she received no prenatal care, tested positive for cocaine and meth. She told nurses she was in no position to care for her child. The state’s children’s division filed a motion in court to obtain state custody of the child, which a judge granted.

Meanwhile, in north ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½ County, Kevin and Brittiany Moses were celebrating their anniversary. The couple met at UMSL, where Kevin thought he would land for just a semester while he rehabbed a football injury before he continued his college athletic career. They fell in love, got married and settled in North County, where Kevin had grown up, first attending Jennings High School and later graduating from McCluer North. He’s 32. She’s 28. They own a house and have good jobs.

They had talked about adopting a child, perhaps a few years down the road. Then the call came from the hospital. They knew the birth mother and were faced with an immediate decision:

Do you want to adopt my baby?

They said yes.

The birth mother signed a power of attorney for Levi to the couple. They bought a car seat, a crib and set up a baby room. They called the state social worker and met her at the hospital. She followed them to their home and inspected it. They took Levi home and planned to start adoption procedures under the state’s foster care program.

Then the state abandoned Levi before he was 2 weeks old.

A juvenile officer asked a judge to remove state custody as of Sept. 26. The state social worker from the children’s division whom the Moseses had met stopped returning phone calls. The convulsions started.

“I called every (state) office I could,� Kevin Moses says. “I couldn’t get anybody to help me.�

Levi was in legal limbo.

The Moseses didn’t yet have custody, and couldn’t add him to their insurance. The state insurance that is supposed to be provided under the adoption and guardianship assistance program was not being provided. The couple called more than a dozen pediatricians, but they wouldn’t see the child without some form of insurance.

The Missouri Department of Social Services was nowhere to be found.

“It was terrifying,� Kevin Moses says.

Dubious distinction

Right around the time Levi was born, health-care advocates in Missouri were raising alarm bells about children who qualified for Medicaid coverage under the MoHealthNet system. One of them was state Rep. Cora Faith Walker, D-Ferguson, who serves on the state’s oversight committee. The head of that committee, Washington University Professor Tim McBride, said the data didn’t support the state’s narrative that children no longer needed the coverage because of an improved economy.

“The state even refused to characterize it as a problem,� Walker says.

But it is. A big problem. With the permission of the Moses family, I shared their records, including email trails with various state social workers, with Walker. An attorney who has worked on adoption and subsidy cases, Walker says Levi absolutely should have been provided state health care from the day he entered state custody.

“I’m angry,� she says. “Levi’s case really highlights the problem with our system.�

The “$300 million question,� Walker says, is whether the problem is bureaucratic ineptitude, or something more intentional, in a state that struggles to balance its budget.

“I still want to hope and believe it’s not something insidious,� Walker says.

But she’s not sure. Neither is Kevin Moses.

In December, he came away from a hearing with the state knowing that the Family Support Division was supposed to provide health care and other subsidies for Levi. He even has a signed contract with the state promising to provide such care as far back as March.

“I received the signed contract and sent it to Amy Martin at State Office for review per her instructions. That was February 4th,� wrote Dawn Meloy, a children’s division supervisor in Jefferson County, in an email to Moses that month. “I hadn’t heard back from her and we’ve been busy with a staffing shortage.�

Last week it was Martin, a state administrator, urging Kevin Moses to be patient.

“I appreciate your frustration over this case but want to encourage you to work with Ms. Meloy to sign another contract,� she wrote.

Levi’s adoption was final June 5. The state has finally issued the family an insurance card, but it has not executed the contract providing the family any of the subsidies promised in state law to care for the child they rescued from state care. It keeps coming up with excuses. The contract was lost in the email system. The state needs a new Social Security number. The dates are wrong. Meanwhile, the Moseses have spent thousands of dollars out of their pockets.

A spokesperson for the Department of Social Services declined to make anybody available for an interview.

Tip of the iceberg

“He’s an amazing kid,� Kevin Moses says of his son, Levi. The couple is very happy they made the decision to adopt. They wanted to tell his story because they don’t want other children to experience what they went through. They know that not everybody can afford an attorney, or take the time to research the law and figure out how the system is supposed to work.

Not everybody can afford to quit a job. Brittiany Moses did, in part because they couldn’t even place Levi in day care without insurance.

“This kid is 10 months old, he was a ward of the state, and he still hasn’t received any benefits at all,� Kevin Moses says. “I followed every legal means I could.�

In court, Kevin Moses says, the state had no good answer for a judge when asked why they dropped Levi’s care. He still can’t ever get a live person on the phone when he has a question.

“I call them every day and they just do not respond,� he says.

This is the state of play in Missouri, where more children are being dropped from Medicaid every day than almost any state in the nation.

“Something is very wrong here,� says Walker, who plans to keep the heat on the state. “There are so many kids who should be covered who aren’t being covered. Levi is just the tip of the iceberg.�