Hi everyone. Been a little out of circulation for awhile. I'm in a nursing home, rehabilitating from a nearly fatal bout of cellulitus. I am trying to escape from captivity on June 6th. But there's something blocking the doorway that has nothing to do with my medical status...A hugely flawed process in Ohio...more below the squiggle.
First, definitions.
"Dual eligible" means someone who has both Medicare and Medicaid.
Medicare pays first, Medicaid second. I am a dual eligible.
There are some services only Medicare will pay for. There are some only Medicaid will pay for. (Medical transportation and home health aides are usually handled by Medicaid rather than Medicare.)
If I am to get out of captivity here, I will need that kind of help.
In a project discussed in Ohio since 2002, effective May 1 dual eligible s were forced to choose a Medicaid HMO...this was supposed to provide the benefits of Medicaid and save the state money. And a new company was supposed to be trained and ready to run various websites and administer the program.
Well the website used to advertise for aides is down with no specified up date. The part of the website that allows home health aides to bill the state for their services (I E get paid.) is also down with no specified uptime, so the aides I wanted to work with, I cannot, because they won't come to a place where they won't get paid. Nor should they. They are doing their *ing jobs and need a paycheck.
I have had a marvelous accessible subsidized apartment since 2011. Huge roll in shower, dropped sinks and stove in the kitchen, etc. Per Hud rules, I can only be gone from there five months before I am given notice to vacate. I am past that five months now, and I will lose that apartment if I cannot get home and have that health care set up by June 6th.
I have nowhere else I can live. None of my families homes are accessible. I might lose my dear apartment that I love so much...So I might remain in a nursing home, even after I am medically cleared to go home (with aides, nursing there, etc), because *a website is down.!
WTF. Thank you Governor Kasich. You have found a novel way of saving Medicaid dollars, I admit. Just don't pay the caregivers who work the most disagreeable job there is...and don't provide services to patients. On the one hand you expand the number of folks on the Medicaid rolls. On the other hand, for the sickest of these (Dual eligibles tend to be older and sicker as a rule)....you have no backup plan to assist them, when your website to administer care and billing goes down.
If I remain trapped in here because of this mess.
It's not going to be a quiet captivity. I will make offline noise about this once a week, anywhere I can until this is fixed.