Quote:
Originally Posted by tabitha
i agree it is an invasion of privacy- but only if you choose to participate, which negates the 'invasion' part. the government has a whole lotta programs that i dont jive with, and i make the choice whether or not to participate. as long as there is that choice, i am not afraid of it.
no offense, but i have always thought the medicaid cutoffs were too high, not too low- our family of 5 would still qualify if we made $74, 000/ year! is it different in other states? i am in missouri.
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no wonder we have simular views on medicaid.....we are in the same area. In this area there has not been much of an issue getting on medicaid. I know soooooo many people that have been or are on medicaid and are definitely not really struggling. For instance, we had some friends that were on it and they had just bought themselves a new Lexus. My point is that most people could probably handle average med bills just fine if they would readjust their priorities.....such as hold off on buying a new Lexus.....lol. Or stop smoking and drinking.......all of that stuff adds up to a lot of money. That is personally why I think they should screen people better. Atleast in this area, pretty much all of the people that drink, smoke, do drugs are on some form of medicaid. But in reality if they just stopped their habbits, then they could afford normal health care and truthfully probably would not need it as much...lol.
I will say that we were declined the second time around when we were up for renewal (we made about 30K)...but the offiice said that if we appealed we would probably be accepted. But we really did not need it anymore. The main reason why I even got on it in the first place was to cover dr and hospital bills for me and baby. And it covered all of them. The only thing I ever had to pay was a 2 dollar co-pay on my birth control.
I believe they base the income cutoff on how many people you have in your family. At the time it was just my hubby and me and one child living on about 30 k. So that was slightly over their cut off. But I am pretty sure that if we had all of our 3 kids at that time and living off of that much, then we would have been accepted without any question.
Honestly we could probably go get it now with the size of our family and our income....even though it is more than the 30 k we were originally on....but again I think they might go by person to income ratio. So with that being said, assumingly if a family with one child has a cut off of 25 k, then a family with 4 children would have a higher cut off.
I know that with my dd's school lunches, they had us fill out a family income survey. They had you list your incomes and how many people were living in the house that lived off of that income and such. They then took it according to ratio. For instance, my dd did not qualify for free lunches but did qualify for a certain reduced price lunch. Although I have friends that have less kids than us (also less income) and their children got cheaper lunches than my dd. And this was not just a school thing, it was a government assistance system. We did not use it at first, but then when we realized that we were going to be spending over 400 dollars on her lunches alone, we decided to take advantage of it .....we pay our taxes....we might as well get a perk from it....lol. They also sent home forms for medicaid, but we did not bother filling them out. I was tempted occationally when my son was going to the dr every week or two (for months) at 75-100 a trip and having several tests done (which of course are extra)....the office said we would probably qualify, but we chose to not do it...so we just paid out of pocket.
And to tell a different story, my aunt (different than the one I talked about earlier) is on medicare and she is going to be getting gastric bipass surgery through her medicare! Which by the way is a very pricey surgery.....several thousands of dollars. And it is not really a medical emergency...she is just overweight (which of course is not healthy) and wants to get the weight off.
And yes all of us live in the same area.
And in regards to out of pocket medical bills(meaning no insurance or government help)........
Atleast many of the facilities in this area will set you up with a no interest payment plan. You can pay as little as 25-50 dollars a month on your bill of thousands and thousands of dollars....and you can keep paying it that way until it is paid off or until the day you die...whichever comes first. If you do not pay, they just torment you, but they do not charge any interest. So in reality....many out of pocket patients will never pay their med bill off if doing a low payment plan. To my knowledge the bill is dropped once you die. I do not belive it gets passed to a family member. It might if you have a living spouse or if it was a child (under 18)that was living with the parents and the parents are still living. I do not know the rules on all of that. But I am pretty sure if a single 50 year old women died with her med bills not paid, then it would not carry down to anyone else. But again, I am not sure how it all works.
There are tons of rules and loop holes and such when it all comes to that type of thing.