Why most welfare "fraud" might not be fraud....vent

[Ottakee]

My son gets SSI. He also works a very part time job. We applied for food stamps for him. Worker said he qualified for $15/month. I agreed as that is better than nothing. Then he got a letter he would get x amount instead. Higher amount so I was happy. Next month I get a letter he will get twice that new amount. Great. Next month, he gets that new highest amount plus $20. The following month he gets $40 less, and on and on. Seriously though, his information has not changed from the $15/month to the way higher amount. I report honestly for him and it varies greatly each month even though his income is very stable.

 

Then due to major life change, I had to apply for medical care for myself. Problem is no one can figure out if I am a family of 1, a family of 4, possibly a family of 3. SSI is never counted....but maybe it is, but never, except maybe.... Home help.funds are not income, but maybe, no, not really, but.....

 

Seriously, I am an intelligent woman and I can not figure out these forms and when I call for help I get different (and often opposite) answers depending on the person I talk to. How in the world do you answer these things honestly when no one that works there can agree on what the correct response/amount is??

 

Vent over, time for bed. Tomorrow is a new day....with new (different) answers to the same questions

[Starr]

Forever ago I did a State overpayment study for SSI. It was a mess then and sounds like it hadn’t improved . Hugs

[OneStepAtATime]

:grouphug:

 

Yeah there is too much red tape, too many conflicting regulations, and everything is so poorly organized there frankly ISN'T a right answer.  I seriously doubt there is anyone on this planet that could give you the one truly correct answer to any of this because there isn't one.  It is just all too poorly organized...

[Seasider]

Yeah, and imagine if you weren't an intelligent woman but a senior citizen on the edge of Alzheimer's.

 

I hope you get some clear answers soon.

[Tap]

I deal with the same thing for dd11.  She doesn't get SSI, but will get state health care until 18 because she is legally a ward of the state. 

I am her permanent legal guardian.  The guardianship can't be changed without the state being involved so it isn't like the state could be confused on who she belongs to legally.

 

Doesn't matter that it is state mandated that she qualifies for medicaid, I still have to apply for her every year and submit:

Our wages (stubs for 3 months=18 documents

Ds wages (3 jobs=24 documents) since he lives in the household

DD19s wages (12 documents) since she lives in the household

Our investments

Our savings

Our home mortgage

Any documentation of earnings other than wages (babysitting etc)

Our car payment and curent value. 

Current value of retirement funds and whole life policies.

 

It is over 60 pages of documents that I have to gather.  And sometimes a ridiculous worker wants our guardianship documents (they legally don't have a right to them, but it is easier to give them over, than fight the worker who will just deny the application without them) which is another 20 pages.

 

Then there are questions on the application that ask for the income of the person applying.  I am applying .....for her.  So, whose wage goes there?   Then there are "household income" boxes.  She is legally her own household, but  lives within my household since she is a minor.  So....which is it?  Hers or ours?  After 11 years of applying for her, I still have to go into a local office to apply.  It is too confusing.   It isn't always what seems to make sence, but sometimes is. LOL  Just often enough to throw you off. LOL

 

I have to get documentation and  complete an application (3 pages). Then I go and sit and wait 60+ minutes for a first come/first served appointment.  For them to check the boxes that say I submitted each type of paperwork...and for them to say.....yep she qualifies. I want to scream......She WILL ALWAYS qualify.  Even if we are multi millionaires, with properties around the world.  She is a ward of the state!!!!!  You would think that they would skip all of this paperwork and just have a box for "ward of the state".  UGHHHH.

[Sdel]

Well, my grandson's parents got food stamps for him when he was a year old and we routinely play the "he has insurance and doesn't need medicaid" game.

 

They haven't had custody of him since he was a month old.....

 

Stefanie

[mamakelly]

Four years ago when my husband was unemployed, I applied for Medi-Cal for my kids. He got a job six months later with insurance and I have spent the last 3 1/2 years trying to get them off Medi-Cal. It really is quite ridiculous the llengths I have gone to try and remove them from the system with no success.

[SparklyUnicorn]

That's so stupid. 

 

And Stephen Hawking just passed so you can't ask him either. 

 

But no really.  Kidding aside, I don't know how anyone figures out any govt. bureaucracy. 

[Ottakee]

Yeah, and imagine if you weren't an intelligent woman but a senior citizen on the edge of Alzheimer's.

 

I hope you get some clear answers soon.

Or one of my cognitively impaired kids.

[Ottakee]

Tap....I am right there with you. I was told that I am a household of 4 but each of my kids is a household of 1.

 

I think I found something that answers my questions but not totally sure.

[frugalmamatx]

Yup. I deal with this every 6 months. My income is not a traditional job {mix of rebates, compensation for surveys, etc}. Caseworkers never know what to do with it - half just ignore it and put no income, half want handwritten letters explaining it in minute detail. There's no rhyme or reason as to which they decide either. 

[Crimson Wife]

  You would think that they would skip all of this paperwork and just have a box for "ward of the state".  UGHHHH.

 

And a box for "permanently disabled and qualifies for the DDS/TEFRA/Katie Beckett waiver". Our income and assets are explicitly excluded from consideration. I had to go through an appeal last fall because of red tape and miscommunication between Medi-Cal and the Regional Center. I'll spare everyone the details because it was completely stupid and the appeals officer agreed when I actually got her on the phone. She was able to straighten it out without requiring us to go in for a hearing. But what a complete waste of taxpayer dollars! :cursing:

[MaeFlowers]

It's sad that things never change. We took food stamps for about 5 months years ago. Every month was a new amount. We never knew what we were going to get. One month it doubled, the next it was cut in half, the next month that was cut in half. Our income didn't change either. How it that supposed to help with food insecurity?

 

And medicaid. Grr. What a mess. We haven't been on it in years. Even when we still qualified I refused to take it just because it wasn't worth the headache of dealing with. I feel for those who need and have to deal with the system.

[Crimson Wife]

Four years ago when my husband was unemployed, I applied for Medi-Cal for my kids. He got a job six months later with insurance and I have spent the last 3 1/2 years trying to get them off Medi-Cal. It really is quite ridiculous the llengths I have gone to try and remove them from the system with no success.

 

That happened to us only when they finally DID remove my older two from Medi-Cal, they ALSO removed my youngest, who qualifies through the developmental disabilities waiver. Even though every correspondence I had sent Medi-Cal had it bolded and underlined to keep her on it.

 

Medi-Cal never notified us that they had removed our children and I only found out when CA Children's Services cut off my youngest's eligibility since she qualifies for CCS based on having Medi-Cal. Because we have primary insurance, Medi-Cal only picks up the co-pays and after we hit our out-of-pocket max for the year, nothing gets billed to Medi-Cal. So I had no idea that Medi-Cal had mistakenly removed my DD in June until CCS cut her off in October. And then because of all the red tape, it took  until April to get her back on Medi-Cal (they did at least retroactively make her eligible from October) :glare:

 

[Ottakee]

And they need to rename SSI and SSDI and social security as they are all handled very differently but people think they are interchangeable.

 

Going back to start that fight later today.

[bethben]

My son is 18 and gets SSI. He is considered his own household on the forms so I never send in pay stubs for anyone else. Recently, there was a mix up and SSI wouldn’t talk to me because he is 18. They asked to speak to him. I told them he can’t. “Is he deaf?†No. “Then can we speak to him?†No-he’s so disabled, he’s mostly nonverbal. It was like they didn’t understand that.

 

So, I have to go over to the office to become his “payeeâ€. They will need to contact his doctor again to make sure he is not able to speak for himself which is ALREADY in the extensive paperwork they have. And no, they won’t take my official guardianship papers from the state stating that he is unable to speak for himself.

 

And the reason all of this started was because of a computer blip that automatically spit out paperwork telling us he was ineligible for a whole mess of things (which when a person looked at it automatically knew it was inaccurate). Aaaarrrrgggg!!!!

 

 

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[cjzimmer1]

I have similar thoughts on Medicaid.  I silently scream every time I get a form from them. 

 

My "favorite" was the time they sent me a form address to me saying fill out the enclosed form by such and such date or you will lose your insurance.  Okay I had just done a review a couple of month ago (and unless things change I'm only supposed to have to go through this once a year) but sometimes it's easier to play along.  So I fill out the form send it in and they immediately tell me no one is eligible for insurance anymore.  Um nothing has changed in the last two months.  So I go round and round with them as to why we were cut off.  Long story short is that the way one of the questions is worded makes you think it's suppose to be answered one way but they really mean something else.  When I questioned how was I suppose to know that was what they meant because I took it at face value (which is not how it was meant), they said well your employee knows that's what we mean so they know how to do this form.  What! you never said anything about the employer filling it out, you sent it to me and told me to fill it out. Oh that was just for your information, your employer was suppose to fill it out and return it.  Um you never said my employer was suppose to fill it out, you never said it was for my information only and now you are saying I'm not eligible based on a form that I filled out incorrectly because you didn't explain yourselves.  Basically yes, but you should have known this so since this is the information we have on file this is what we use to determine eligibility.  It was a very long process but I did prevail but I have many times wondered how many people get dropped and left with nothing because they simply don't have it in them (knowledge, energy, time whatever) to fight the system.  

[bethben]

Four years ago when my husband was unemployed, I applied for Medi-Cal for my kids. He got a job six months later with insurance and I have spent the last 3 1/2 years trying to get them off Medi-Cal. It really is quite ridiculous the llengths I have gone to try and remove them from the system with no success.

I had similar to this issue. There was a point where the kids had three different insurance programs in two different states. The computer in one state didn’t have the capability at the time to remove people from the system. The other state got fixed when their names came up for renewal and I didn’t fill out the paperwork. Even then, I was still getting letters for a year past that. I ignored it because the hassle was too much. It’s difficult to try to be a person of integrity in a messed up system.

 

 

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[bethben]

Also, yes about timelines! When we had our computer mess up, I had four business days to figure out the mess and get paperwork back to them. They sent out a letter, it took a week to get to me, I had four days to get all their random paperwork together and stick it in the mail so that they could have it in their hands 18 days after they mailed the thing. I found out they do that so they have more wiggle room on their end.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[mamakelly]

That happened to us only when they finally DID remove my older two from Medi-Cal, they ALSO removed my youngest, who qualifies through the developmental disabilities waiver. Even though every correspondence I had sent Medi-Cal had it bolded and underlined to keep her on it.

 

Medi-Cal never notified us that they had removed our children and I only found out when CA Children's Services cut off my youngest's eligibility since she qualifies for CCS based on having Medi-Cal. Because we have primary insurance, Medi-Cal only picks up the co-pays and after we hit our out-of-pocket max for the year, nothing gets billed to Medi-Cal. So I had no idea that Medi-Cal had mistakenly removed my DD in June until CCS cut her off in October. And then because of all the red tape, it took  until April to get her back on Medi-Cal (they did at least retroactively make her eligible from October) :glare:

 

 

See I think my issue could have to with CCS too. One of my kids qualifies for CCS because of his birth defect, but we always had such great insurance, we literally never had to use it. I've heard similar stories from other people. It's so difficult!!

[Tap]

My son is 18 and gets SSI. He is considered his own household on the forms so I never send in pay stubs for anyone else. Recently, there was a mix up and SSI wouldn’t talk to me because he is 18. They asked to speak to him. I told them he can’t. “Is he deaf?†No. “Then can we speak to him?†No-he’s so disabled, he’s mostly nonverbal. It was like they didn’t understand that.

 

So, I have to go over to the office to become his “payeeâ€. They will need to contact his doctor again to make sure he is not able to speak for himself which is ALREADY in the extensive paperwork they have. And no, they won’t take my official guardianship papers from the state stating that he is unable to speak for himself.

 

And the reason all of this started was because of a computer blip that automatically spit out paperwork telling us he was ineligible for a whole mess of things (which when a person looked at it automatically knew it was inaccurate). Aaaarrrrgggg!!!!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I once had a worker argue with me that a doctor's note in my file wasn't sufficient evidence of a disability.  I asked what kind of proof they wanted...he said it wasn't up to him to determine that, just that they needed proof.  I asked if they wanted copies of testing, he said no, they wouldn't mean anything to them because a doctor has to interpret the tests.  So, I again, asked why he wouldn't take the doctor's note?  This disability issue is permanent, and the doctor writes a note each year. The note has to be in a very specific format, with precise wording.  Each year the doctor reprints the same note, with a new date and signature.  I finally get the worker to say he is questioning the validity of the note since it is worded the same each year.  I explain that it doesn't make sense for the doctor to reformat it and that if he is questioning if the doctor wrote it, they can call the doctor to verify it. To which he tells me they don't do that, it is my responsibility to prove the note is real!!!!

 

I asked for a supervisor and he accepted the note, without question in a matter of minutes and apologized.  I filed a complaint on the original worker. 

[PinkyandtheBrains.]

 

 

 

All the hoop jumping I had to do while on SNAP and Medicaid was ridiculous.

 

 

Fraud levels are incredibly low, but perception is other wise.

[Ottakee]

Yes, we had it wherey son could not fill out the forms because he was legally incompetent but it could not as legal guardian as I was not him. Basically it had to be filled out and but neither of us could legally do it.

[JumpyTheFrog]

It sounds like they need to scrap every program and start over with one department in charge of everything. You’d have one file and they’d check off the box for SS, medicaid, SNAP, or whatever.

[Ottakee]

It sounds like they need to scrap every program and start over with one department in charge of everything. You’d have one file and they’d check off the box for SS, medicaid, SNAP, or whatever.

That would just be way too easy

[learning123]

The saddest part is when people who need medical care don't get it because they are already overburdened by their illness; applying takes a mental equivalent to an olympic athlete.

[Crimson Wife]

The saddest part is when people who need medical care don't get it because they are already overburdened by their illness; applying takes a mental equivalent to an olympic athlete.

 

Or the parent is juggling multiple jobs without paid time off and can't afford to spend hours on the phone with (or worse sitting in the waiting room at) Medicaid/Social Security/Regional Center/whoever because the bills are due and the fridge is bare.

 

[Tap]

Yes, we had it wherey son could not fill out the forms because he was legally incompetent but it could not as legal guardian as I was not him. Basically it had to be filled out and but neither of us could legally do it.

UGGG!  That is ridiculous.  Especially when you have the documentation to prove you have legal guardianship and they can't sign a form legally anyways.  Stupid!