There is a black hole medical insurance!

[bethben]

This is my Public service announcement.  If you are on a state sponsored medical insurance plan, don't try to move from state to state.  Especially after the 15th of the month.  If you do this, you will be 1 1/2 months or more without medical insurance because once you leave the state, you are automatically taken off their insurance plan and it takes up to 1 1/2 months or more to get on the new state plan (if that is the path you want to take).  If you are in a temporary housing situation such as a hotel waiting for a new rental month to start up or waiting for a home purchase to close, then you really don't exist in any state and are even more so in the black hole because you are neither here nor there.   So, even if you have every intention of playing by the rules, there are those instances that you fall into a black hole and there is nothing you can do about it.  We did find that we can join one of those Christian medical share plans to get us through the black hole months as long as we don't try to access care for two of our kid's pre-existing conditions.  Oh and then other fun!  Our state's computer system can't make changes!  So a change in income or just the fact that my husband is moving from the state and we will follow in the next month or two might mean that we have to reapply all over again.   If I had known how screwed up this all was, I wouldn't have gone this route!  But trying to get insurance through our state's exchange automatically put us on this route.   Lots of exciting times here!

 

Beth

[tshirtyogapantmama]

It's tough. The worse for us was my kids have thought about working part-time to earn money. We learned quickly that their "income" would count as income for the household and it would make my monthly insurance payment go UP over $100 more per month. It really stinks because I've always felt kids earning their own moeny was a good thing, but now at least for mine it isn't. 

[Ottakee]

BethBen---I TOTALLY hear you.  We didn't move but I have 2 young adult children on SSI and another special needs not on SSI yet and a Native American husband............they don't know what to do with us either.  I think they got mine figured out now but now say dh gets state insurance starting Jan 1..........but I already spent 20+ hours getting him marketplace insurance that started Jan 1 as we didnt' know if he would have state insurance or not.  Now I need to find out if we need to back date and cancel everything or keep going as we are or ?????

 

They SHOULD back date you to the date you apply in the new state........but as you know that could be 45+ days from now which doesn't help when you have special needs kids.  And the Christian sharing plans won't take a dh with heart attack, me who had heart surgery and 3 special needs kids.

 

Hopefully you can get it fixed and soon.  I have had the best luck going and sitting in the lobby and waiting and waiting.  I get answers faster that way than phone calls or emails etc.

[bethben]

I've talked ad naseum to the social worker (who has been very helpful).  As I explain I'm trying my hardest to keep everything above board, she mentions stuff like, "Well by the time we get into the system to make changes to your husband's salary, you will most likely be out of state".  I have documentation that shows I tried if they ever contest all this.  My husband doesn't technically have a permanent address there either so I guess he's still a resident in our state?  What about workers who work remotely for a month sporadically?  We also have an income for two months that would put us way over the income requirements, but would drop down to dismal levels after those two months are up.  Like seasonal workers who may have really good incomes in the spring/summer and then not as much in the fall/winter.  They don't have any way of processing these types of erratic incomes.  Even when I tried to plug in everything on the marketplace website for our state (which has been "live" for over a year), they were having processing errors.  I kept thinking the processing error was happening and then boom!  I get an email announcing I was successful - after it told me I was not.  We really want to get out of this system but may have to deal with it another year.  

 

The reason I am trying so hard to keep above board with all this is that I have a friend who was authorized to get SSI disability for her daughter.  A couple of years into getting payments, the government decided that they were wrong and her family really didn't qualify.  So, they are fining her to get back all the money they paid.  Yup!  She is working with a lawyer.  

 

This is really messed up.