Opinion: Fix the broken DSS call center and protect CT residents

Hartford Courant – Tuesday, July 7, 2026
By Sheldon Toubman

Sheldon Toubman, an attorney with Disability Rights Connecticut, opines that federal Medicaid and SNAP cuts will exacerbate already long Department of Social Services (DSS) call center wait times.

Gov. Ned Lamont’s long-standing unwillingness to adequately fund the essential call center allowing access to medical care, food assistance and other essential public benefit programs for disabled, elderly and other low-income individuals risks serious harm to over a million state residents served by it.

Already, the call center, run by the Department of Social Services, or DSS, is dysfunctional with severe chronic understaffing resulting in very long waits, high numbers of people giving up on their calls and, more recently, the routine hanging up on callers asking for help. The problem will soon turn catastrophic when the massive and confusing Medicaid and Special Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, cuts passed by Congress last year fully take effect in January of 2027. The problem must be corrected now.

When HR1 (“One Big Beautiful Bill Act”) passed last summer, Connecticut state officials, including Governor Lamont and legislative leaders, condemned the bill as a wholesale cut to essential Medicaid and SNAP programs causing extensive harm to low-income people in our state.

The worst part was the added work reporting requirements that are going into effect for people who qualify for food help from SNAP and health insurance through the Medicaid eligibility category known as “HUSKY D.” Currently, HUSKY D provides essential health insurance to about 316,000 people, almost 10% of Connecticut’s population, a high percentage of whom have disabilities or serious medical conditions.

The new federal law requires that, starting in January 2027, all HUSKY D members will have to prove they are working or volunteering for a minimum of 80 hours per month, or prove they are excused from the work requirements due to several exemptions, including being “medically frail,” having a serious medical condition or being a caregiver to a disabled person. Many thousands of people in other states that adopted similar work requirements in the past lost coverage, but the vast majority of them were either working or exempt. The problem was red tape and extreme difficulty in documenting their status in the state’s system.

This will now be imposed on every state, along with twice yearly redeterminations in place of annual reviews, which means twice as many erroneous eligibility terminations due to confusing paperwork or agency errors. This new process will create major challenges for people with disabilities in providing the required paperwork. Combined with the severe lack of staff at the call center, it will be very difficult to maintain their eligibility for life-saving supports.

Last year, Governor Lamont expressed his commitment to mitigating the harm to our residents from these severe cuts, cuts that will result in eligible individuals losing their benefits. His Social Services Commissioner also made clear that his administration was “trying to do all that we can to try to preserve as much coverage under the new federal rules as we possibly can and we will help them navigate the changes.”

The legislature and the governor then passed a dedicated $500 million fund to address a good portion of the harm from the federal cuts last fall. But most of that money has gone unused while people are already losing SNAP benefits due to HR1, and there is very little state assistance for erroneous terminations. In October, thousands of legally present immigrants will also lose their Medicaid coverage due to HR1. The governor needs to follow through now on his promise and spend this dedicated money on basic assistance to the tens of thousands of people who are being caught up in the developing crisis, which will get much worse in January.

What is clear is that these multiple kinds of new red tape will cause many eligible people to be denied Medicaid coverage. About 110,000 poor Connecticut adults could lose Medicaid coverage And when these individuals receive a notice of termination purportedly because they did not comply with the extensive new paperwork requirements, they will understandably panic and seek help from the DSS call center.

Unfortunately, the DSS call center is already in crisis. The center has never been adequately staffed. In an attempt to save money, a succession of commissioners and two governors adopted a series of cheaper technological changes. Each change, it was claimed, would somehow magically address the long waits – which at various times have averaged over an hour, with over half of callers hanging up in frustration. Many of the recent changes involve requiring a person to use an on-line system or, more recently, a chatbot.

Governor Lamont just told advocates at a July 6 forum sponsored by NAMI-CT, in response to a question about increasing capacity for the broken call center, that he wants “more on-line access,” ignoring what is actually needed. Even for those with the capacity to use them, these automated systems can only provide information, not actually solve a problem.

Predictably, none of these fixes really worked since the only answer for an inherently human task is to have sufficient humans to perform it. The most recent change included offering a call-back. But that doesn’t work for people who are working during the day – the stated goal of the new work requirements – in jobs which don’t allow personal calls, or who are engaged in caregiving. The return calls also are routinely made hours or even days later. Desperate to keep their essential benefits, callers are understandably unwilling to wait for a call which may come too late.

Nevertheless, the system has been programmed to hang up on any caller who waits over 10 minutes and does not “choose” this option. Recently, some 40% to 45% of all callers got no help because they either gave up or were hung up on by the system.

This systematic response is troubling on several levels. First, it denies people the option of speaking to a DSS worker when they call if that is needed to address an immediate issue or because they can’t receive a call-back. Second, DSS itself recognizes the need for timely access to live assistance for the vulnerable people it serves: in contracts with vendors operating other call centers, DSS requires that at least 90% of calls be answered by a live representative within 60 seconds. Yet the same individuals are blocked from access to DSS staff.

Matters recently got worse due to the new red tape to obtain SNAP, already in effect, generating more calls. All of this will get much worse when the HUSKY D work requirements and twice annual redeterminations hit in January.

Every attempt to fix the DSS call center has been exhausted. All the deck chairs have been moved around several times now. The only thing left is to actually fix the problem by adequately staffing the call center, before the tsunami comes in January, and to provide for automatic refilling of the high level of staff attrition.

The legislature already appropriated the money needed to do the necessary hiring and provide other basic assistance. Now the governor needs to do the right thing, as promised a year ago.

Sheldon Toubman is an attorney with Disability Rights Connecticut, which serves individuals with a broad range of disabilities. He has represented CT Medicaid enrollees and applicants for 36 years.

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