{"id":68453,"date":"2025-12-23T12:31:09","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T12:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/68453\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T12:31:09","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T12:31:09","slug":"pennsylvania-will-extend-deadlines-for-some-who-lost-benefits-because-of-state-mail-delay-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/68453\/","title":{"rendered":"Pennsylvania will extend deadlines for some who lost benefits because of state mail delay | State"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

The Pennsylvania Capitol in downtown Harrisburg on October 14, 2025. (Photo by Jessica Kourkounis for the Pennsylvania Capital-Star)<\/p>\n

This story was\u00a0originally published by WESA. It is not available for republishing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pennsylvania\u2019s Department of Human Services is notifying households who might have lost benefits like medical or food assistance because of a problem with a state mail vendor that caused more than one million pieces of mail to be delayed by a month<\/a>, officials said Friday.<\/p>\n

The Harrisburg-area vendor did not send a month\u2019s worth of state mail, officials have said.<\/p>\n

Some families in the Pittsburgh area have been impacted by the problem.<\/p>\n

Raymond Jiang is a 26-year-old Franklin Park resident with autism.<\/p>\n

His mother Lei Zhang said her son Raymond\u2019s Medicaid assistance was wrongly cut off because of the mail delay.<\/p>\n

On December 12, she received a letter \u2014 dated Nov. 10 \u2014 saying her son\u2019s Medicaid would be terminated Nov. 23. By the time she got the letter, it was too late to be able to keep the benefits on while she appealed the case.<\/p>\n

The cutoff means not only has he lost the health insurance Medicaid provides, but also services and supports like a job coach, who helps him maintain his job as a dishwasher at a senior living center.<\/p>\n

The ordeal has been very stressful, Zhang said. \u201cI don\u2019t know how he\u2019s going to live without those supports,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

About 1.7 million pieces of mail from the state\u2019s Department of Human Services were impacted by the delay, which lasted from Nov. 3 to Dec. 3.<\/p>\n

A spokesman for the department, which administers benefits like Medicaid and food stamps, said the agency\u2019s staff \u201chas worked around the clock\u201d since it discovered the problem \u201cto ensure clients receive communications as quickly as possible so they can respond to renewals and requests for information, and so DHS can make accurate eligibility determinations and avoid unnecessary disruptions.\u201d<\/p>\n

The department is working to notify impacted households, said Brandon Cwalina, a DHS spokesperson, and is also seeking guidance from federal officials since programs such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, have strict federal guidelines.<\/p>\n

The department is extending deadlines for appeals \u201cwhere possible under federal and state law,\u201d Cwalina said.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s unclear exactly how many people have been impacted to the point of losing their benefits, said Maripat Pileggi, a supervising attorney at Community Legal Services of Philadelphia, which assists low-income clients and has been helping some impacted by this issue.<\/p>\n

People who receive assistance through SNAP or Medicaid must renew their benefits annually, and for SNAP, must also fill out semi-annual renewal paperwork every six months. People also must report changes in income or household size.<\/p>\n

While the state has a website<\/a> and an app where people are able to receive electronic notices, report some changes and upload documents, many people still receive paper notices through the U.S. mail about renewals.<\/p>\n

\u201cMail is critically important for public benefits,\u201d said Ann Sanders, an advocate with anti-hunger organization Just Harvest, which helps people apply for food assistance.<\/p>\n

Sanders said the state will send text message reminders when people need to renew their benefits, but the reminders are often necessarily vague, she said, such as telling people to call the department.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey won\u2019t send you a text message that says your benefits were stopped,\u201d Sanders said, partly because that\u2019s exactly the kind of message sent by online scammers.<\/p>\n

The state has since terminated the contract with the mail vendor, \u201cand is exploring all legal options to protect Pennsylvanians, hold the vendor accountable and recover damages caused by the delay,\u201d DHS\u2019s Cwalina said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pennsylvania Capitol in downtown Harrisburg on October 14, 2025. (Photo by Jessica Kourkounis for the Pennsylvania Capital-Star)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":68454,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[36217,36218,7096,34126,3831,7939,36219,36220,28,30,29,380,7617,27740],"class_list":{"0":"post-68453","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-pennsylvania","8":"tag-department-human-services","9":"tag-election-mailbag","10":"tag-food-assistance","11":"tag-government-politics","12":"tag-health-care","13":"tag-medicaid","14":"tag-medicaid-assistance","15":"tag-pa-snap","16":"tag-pennsylvania","17":"tag-pennsylvania-headlines","18":"tag-pennsylvania-news","19":"tag-society-of-the-united-states","20":"tag-supplemental-nutrition-assistance-program","21":"tag-vendor"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68453","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68453"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68453\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68454"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68453"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68453"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68453"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}