State reimburses woman for wrong calls

? Missouri’s social service agency reimbursed a Montana businesswoman $223 for having to field more than 1,000 calls after it mistakenly listed her toll-free number on letters to Medicaid recipients.

The letter, mailed in August to 339,000 adult Medicaid recipients, listed Sharon Curtiss-Rivera’s business phone as the hot line for hearing- and speech-impaired people whose services were being cut.

Instead of simply hanging up, Curtiss-Rivera said Wednesday that she listened to some callers as they described their medical woes and expressed frustration and confusion that they would no longer be covered.

Curtiss-Rivera’s bill shows she received 1,015 phone calls – consuming just shy of 13 hours of her time – from August through February, with nearly three-quarters of those calls coming in August.