In 1985, at the height of the Cabbage Patch Kids craze, some of the larger and more prestigious Chicago Hospitals gave them hospital certificates of birth. If your sick child was hospitalized and you brought your child a Cabbage Patch doll, staff would give you a blank hospital certificate to complete with the doll's name, birthdate, gender, and other information. Such is the power of mass marketing.
In 1985 I was working at the Illinois Department of Public Aid's training office at 100 N. Western Avenue in Chicago. This location, at the intersection of two very different ethnic neighborhoods ( or "ghettos" if you prefer) and a huge Catholic Charities emergency shelter, was ideal for training new caseworkers. After a week of basic instruction, trainees were given small and manageable caseloads to learn the work while minimizing the damage done to peoples' lives. It also gave time to get to know our colleagues and become friends with a few, and that is how I learned this little story.
In 1985, a Public Aid recipient brought his sick child in hospital a Cabbage Patch doll, and was given a blank hospital certificate for the child's doll. In those bygone days, the Cook County Clerk's office was very slow at issuing birth certificates and hospital social workers did not usually take applications for Social Security numbers. Said malefactor reported the doll's hospital certificate to my colleague trainee as that of his newborn child and requested emergency Medicaid and Food Stamps. My friendly colleague requested a Social Security number for the doll. SSA has an office in Baltimore which handles these emergency applications: the case worker or social worker receives the SS number is less than an hour, and the applicant gets the SS card in the mail in 3 or 4 days. With the hospital certificate and the SS number, my colleague created a Medicaid case for the doll, and added the doll to the recipient's Food Stamp case. The recipient was told to return with a birth certificate ASAP within 8 weeks, and two reminder letters were sent. After the second reminder, the recipient came in without birth certificate and with this question: "How would it be if there was no child?"
HOW WOULD IT BE?
Illinois notified all hospitals that giving hospital birth certificates to dolls would cost them their license. Public Aid offices were not allowed to accept hospital certificates "until further notice" which turned out to be 10 weeks, and this caused distress and suffering to people with real newborn children who needed Medicaid for the hospital bill and their child's medical care. Medicaid was never billed for the Cabbage Patch doll, and its Medicaid case was immediately canceled. Social Security numbers cannot be withdrawn or rescinded, and the doll still has a Social Security account. There was a small overpayment to the recipient's Food Stamp account, I think the minimum issuance was $20 back then, and that was recouped by deducting it from his next issuance. Obviously he was never trusted on anything again. What he had done was a criminal offense, but these $20 cases are never pursued in court for obvious reasons.
Back in those days, defrauding Public Aid and the Food Stamps program was a sideline business for organized crime. Those cases were never reported in the press. You only heard of them by being professionally involved, and if anyone was caught, you could learn the details with a public record court search. That was not so easy back before public records were on the internet. I know of one case that would make a great film script.
Would a Cabbage Patch doll with a hospital birth certificate and Social Security card have collector value? Your thoughts are welcome.