My family and I have finally been approved for Medicaid. That’s great one might think. Now we will be able to get the healthcare that we so desperately need. For children ages 19 and younger, Medicaid can be a very great program, because of federally funded programs like State Children’s Health Insurance Program, more commonly known as SCHIP. That is what my daughter has been approved for, but my husband and I, well we are not so lucky.
My daughter, age 5, is going to be enrolled on Healthy Kids. She will be getting a card in the mail, and she will be able to go to the doctors when she is sick. She will also be able to get regular checkups at the dentists. She has been uninsured for over a year. My husband and I had been working the past year, but neither employer provided health insurance at an affordable cost. My last employer did not offer a family plan, only individual plans, and even that was costly. My husband’s previous employer offered a HMO plan for about $250 a week for a family plan. Taking forty-percent of your check each week for insurance is absurd. So, all three of us have been uninsured for over a year.
My husband lost his job in January, and I was let go back in December. My job was a part time office job, and I do not qualify for unemployment. So we are living off of one unemployment check every two weeks. We had to move in with his parents, as we could not afford rent anymore. This is not the ideal situation by any means, so when I heard we could qualify for Medicaid I was ecstatic. With my recent illness, and two days in the emergency room, I needed help.
My husband and I have been approved for Medicaid, but it comes with a price. A $609 a month deductible is what we have to kick out first before Medicaid kicks in on a monthly basis. So, we are not able to see a doctor if we get sick. We still cannot afford it. Apparently the way the guidelines are set up, since we have some income, the Medicaid folks feel we can afford to pay the first $609 each month towards medical care.
All I want to do is go see a doctor when I am sick. If I wake up with the latest and greatest flu, I want to go see a doctor without the worry of how I am going to pay for the visit. We are financially ruined as it is, we have years of medical debt and it looks like it is going to get worse. Medicaid does not help at all. If you make a small income and aren’t able to get health insurance, Medicaid would seem like it would be great. All Medicaid does is act like an insurance company!
By the way, my two days in the emergency room was back in February, and the bills are about $10,000! Medicaid denied them. Now I have to fight the system to make sure they get paid. If only we had single payer, guaranteed universal healthcare in this country; maybe I would not be financially strapped.
People are dying out there! People are going broke! We are bleeding to death in America, and yet our government thinks that keeping insurance companies involved will solve this crisis. Their idea is to expand Medicaid, and make it available for all Americans to choose as a public option. This is wrong! Medicaid only feeds our tax dollars to the insurance companies. Medicaid will not resolve the healthcare problem; it will only make it poorer.