New CMS Rule - Employment Should be Required for Receiving MEDICAID Benefits.

a reply to: wantsome

Much also depends on how well you "mesh" with the Medicare Disability caseworker. Even though official manuals don't spell it out, many benefit interviews, physicals, and other aspects of receiving government benefits, are personality dependent.

originally posted by: OccamsRazor04
a reply to: carewemust

If able to work then yes they should.

The home environment must be such that the individual can work. In Maine, a single mom gets a waiver from the work-requirement, because child-care costs as much as, or more than, she would earn on a minimum wage job. (That's what Maine's governor said during a FoxNews interview last week.)

a reply to: diggindirt

I'm sure working folks resent able-bodied people leeching off the taxpayer, just like immigrants who followed the rules, resent those given a free pass or a short-cut to citizenship.

originally posted by: burdman30ott6
a reply to: carewemust

It's not exactly what I'd support (that being total elimination of MedicAID), but it's certainly a step in the right direction. Yeah, if you're on the dole, there need to be requirements to ensure you're at least doing all you can to provide for yourself in all things.

When Wisconsin enacted "work requirements" as a condition for receiving FOOD STAMPS, 41,000 able-bodied adults were kicked off the food stamp roles, but 12,000 found work, via the state-sponsored program to help them.
More At: www.twincities.com...

originally posted by: diggindirtNot everyone can be a rocket scientist or a rock star.

Why not? Everyone who wants to succeed in life should be able to. Rather than encouraging people to start at the bottom where it's difficult to move up, why not enable them to do better?

Apparently nobody ever took them aside and told them, "Be sure you have food, and shelter and some small amount of cash put aside for emergencies before you spend your last dime on a new phone."

People already live by that. And phones are not expensive, they're the cheapest, most accessible computing device most people have access to, and they're networked. I bought my phone for $40, it's lasted for 4 years now.

There are immense psychological benefits to becoming an independent adult who doesn't have to crawl into a government office to get the basic necessities of life. Living on the dole isn't good for one's mental health.

Now this is something I can actually speak to because of my personal history. At 18 I came down with a severe illness, at 22 I got diagnosed and put on disability. At 24 I decided I didn't want to live that way forever and went to college, often times using my disability money to cover tuition (and living homeless as a result). At 35, I'm about to finish degrees #5 and #6. Which are enough to finish my education for now.

Last May, just 8 months ago, I started the first job I've ever worked in my life not counting some part time high school stuff. I went from living on $750/month for the last 13 years to making $45/hour and then $60/hour after 90 days. I fully understand what being given assistance to live on is like, and I know what it's like to finally be getting an income too.

To your point, I've been in a much happier frame of mind since bringing in a paycheck. But at the same time, I know my own limits. I'm only in this position because I got the support in the past to enable me to do so. Welfare and free time is a recipe for extremes. Either lots of cheap entertainment and no productivity such as video games, or netflix... or the chance to make something of yourself where your only responsibility is to ensure that you're a better person tomorrow, than you are today.

If I had to work for an income, to get where I am today, I would be much further behind in academic achievement, and therefore much further behind in my career. Alternatively, I may have been able to fund it all through student loans, and would be carrying $200k in debt rather than my current $0 balance.

Not everyone is going to do that, but some will take assistance and use it to better themselves. I see no reason why we should stand in the way of those people, just so we can feel morally superior by making it harder for the screwups.

Anyways, the dole did a lot for my mental health. Not all good, but not all bad either. It gave me security, it meant I could get health care rather than become ill and die, and it gave me the resources to sit down, figure out what I really want to do, and make it happen.

Now I'm in a dream job, making a lot of money, and on the verge of finishing my education. None of that would have been possible without government aid.

a reply to: Aazadan
Of course everyone who wants to succeed should be able to do so. What about this program will prevent that? You can go to job training, you can go to school, you can go to work or you can go help your community. Please tell in detail how those activities impede advancement. Seems to me they are designed to give a little boost to anyone who is currently able-bodied and unemployed, drawing benefits. If nothing else, it can allow one to make decisions about how they DON'T want to spend the rest of their life.
The resources are available for those who want to advance beyond minimum wage jobs. It isn't the state or the feds who are holding these people back. This program just gives them a giant incentive to get off their backsides and contribute to their own upkeep.

Yours is a great story. I'm happy you've been able to overcome the obstacles life has thrown at you. Congrats on six degrees! I don't think I know anyone with six degrees.

originally posted by: carewemust

The home environment must be such that the individual can work. In Maine, a single mom gets a waiver from the work-requirement, because child-care costs as much as, or more than, she would earn on a minimum wage job. (That's what Maine's governor said during a FoxNews interview last week.)

While I understand and even agree with the intent of this rule release, the law of unintended consequences requires that it will also be one more nail in the coffin of the nuclear family. Yet another reason to remain unmarried.

For every up there is a corresponding down.

a reply to: carewemust

Unless I missed a news piece on 29,000 Wisconsonians starving to death, all 41,000 seem to have worked things out, ya?

a reply to: Aazadan

Congrats and, wow!, great work!

When you find yourself in a good place, those of us who helped pay for your journey to success (and we appreciate your excellent effort to help yourself!) would hope you would use a little bit of your success to help others in return.

Thanks, and you're welcome!

Yeah, talk to my neighbor from Mexico. He and his wife did it the legal way. He can give the leftists an ear full, lemme tell ya. He's a "Build the Wall!" guy, got the t-shirt and the hat.

originally posted by: carewemust
a reply to: Azureblue


What's ironic is that those people who wanted to kill-off the elderly in 1969, are now elderly themselves. I wonder if they're eager to die?

Funtastic, love it.

DR Day was a peeditrician, I would find it very poetic if he lost his house and money through some mistake and learned what it's like to be on the bottom of society and found himself a victim of his own making.

originally posted by: Serdgiam
a reply to: wantsome

I feel the entire system needs an overhaul before we do anything else. Its immensely confusing and I swear that minor issues get more consideration than serious ones, whether that be disability or Medicaid or Medicare.

I recently ran into similar troubles. When I won my disability case (after nearly a decade of fighting for it), I was made ineligible for Medicaid, but not Medicare. Thus began 40+ hours of phone calls, very literally, and in the end I am now on Medicare, but Medicaid is paying for it.

Its all a total clusterf$%&. People who are truly in need tend to get lost in the mix of all this. I'm not sure if irony is quite the right word for it, but its a tough situation.

I had the same exact thing happen with medicaid. They took away my medicaid even though I qualified for both medicaid and medicare. Social Security told me I qualified for medicaid human resources said I didn't. I had to get my state representative involved. It took 6 months before I got medicaid back. Dealing with my local department of human resources has been a nightmare. They screw with me every chance they get.

It's too bad that President Obama didn't have the common sense to listen to his adviser, WARRNEN BUFFETT. Warren advised him to scrap ObamaCare and start with a clean-slate, because the ObamaCare Medicaid and Subsidized Individual market would eventually implode.

Source: www.weeklystandard.com...#!

The current course is unsustainable. Instead of arguing over cuts and trimming and other draconian measures, Congress should consider doing what President Trump suggested (and was laughed at by conservatives) soon after he took office. That is, open up the MEDICARE program for everybody who wants it.

originally posted by: carewemust
a reply to: wantsome

Much also depends on how well you "mesh" with the Medicare Disability caseworker. Even though official manuals don't spell it out, many benefit interviews, physicals, and other aspects of receiving government benefits, are personality dependent.

I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have a disability or medicare case worker that I know of. Every few years social security reviews my case to see if I'm still disabled. I have to fill out paperwork and my doctor submits a report. Someone at SS reviews it. They have claim examiners and medical examiners but they don't have case workers. No where on any of my SS paperwork does it list a case worker. No ones ever identified themselves to me as a case worker. I've dealt with people at SS and it's never the same person.

Human services I have a case worker and her name is on every letter I get with a case #. Human services is at the state level. They're in control of food stamps housing and medicaid.

In my past I have always had health insurance through my employer. Now that I am self employed, I apply for insurance through the marketplace for myself and my daughter (my ex covers the son, i cover the daughter). I've had to partake in the marketplace for 3 years now and the first two years each time I applied, they pushed my daughter over into medicaid enrollment only to come back and decide she was not eligible. This is a tedious process that each year has been extremely messy. All though I have signed up on-time each year for the insurance, as soon as my daughter gets moved automatically into the medicaid process everything comes to a halt and they don't finish the process before the 1st of the year when the new insurance starts.

This year I enrolled in November for insurance, late in December the medicaid people still had not processed my daughter's eligibility status and returned the decision to the marketplace. I made several phone calls to both places, the local medicaid office and the marketplace (because neither can discuss any details about the other at all). To find anything out it involves repeated phone calls back and forth between the agencies. I'm thinking why is it taking so so long, she has never been eligible in prior years what has changed ? Ok I do remember in the news changes were being made and maybe something got tweaked which now makes my daughter eligible. I've never been eligible either. Finally to my utter surprise on the last day of December, i get a letter in the mail stating my daughter is eligible for medicaid and it will be effective Feb 1, 2018. This prompted me of course to call the marketplace and the medicaid office again because for the life of me I could not understand why she wasn't eligible on the first of the year since I did my enrollment on time. Neither agency could successfully answer that question and just told me it would be effective Feb 1, 2018 because the medicaid office didn't get the process done on time for it to start on Jan 1st. As a result me and my daughter are both enrolled into a health plan for the month of Jan 2018 in the marketplace, that way she doesn't have a break in coverage. Later I receive a letter in the mail stating that due to my daughter being covered on medicaid I now need to go re-sign up for insurance on the marketplace for a plan only covering me.

So I go onto the marketplace site and begin the enrollment process all over again like the letter is telling me to do. Once I got through the process to sign up for insurance for only me, the system shoots back stating that I alone will have to pay $600-$700 bucks per month for a health plan and I am no longer eligible for a credit. I'm shocked because I know I can not afford this amount. So I call the marketplace again and they say that because my daughter is on medicaid I am not eligible for a marketplace credit anymore, that I need to call medicaid to have her removed so that she can come back onto the marketplace plan with me which will pull the monthly rate back down for us.

This is where I am at in the process, waiting for them to remove her from medicaid so that we can get back onto the plan we signed up for in January that had a reasonable monthly premium rate. Otherwise my daughter is on medicaid and I for the first time in my life will not have health insurance coverage due to affordability.

When I called the medicaid office to request my daughter be removed... the lady informed me that my daughter has been enrolled in medicaid since Nov of 2017 ! ? I was like huh ? No, I have verbally been told by your folks no decisions had been made on her when I called you all numerous times in Dec to find out why the process was taking so long. She was on a marketplace plan with me in Nov of 2017 so why would she be on medicaid when she wasn't even eligible for it in 2017 ? But she is assuring me that she was on medicaid since Nov 2017 ? Yet I have not medicaid information or a card for her coverage to of been on the plan Not only that, I have a piece of paper in front of me stating she starts on medicaid on Feb 1, 2018 and had phone conversations to ask why is it delayed for her when we ere enrolled on time.

This raised a red flag for me ! Of course my mind automatically thinks FRAUD within. Who is really on this medicaid plan that they claim my daughter has been on that I've been told she was not on. I've been paying for a marketplace plan for her and I for the whole year of 2017. How can it be this messy ! ? How come no one is on the same page ? Why do they not have to reach the deadlines but we the folks signing up for the insurance do have to meat the deadlines to be enrolled on time.

Also why would the marketplace system shoot my daughter into medicaid without first informing me that if they do this, I am no longer eligible for a credit on the marketplace. Basically it should inform me up front and give me the option to opt out but it doesn't do this. I have no choice in the matter, the system just automatically does it and no where along the way an I informed that it will result in my not being able to afford insurance if she is on medicaid.

leolady

a reply to: leolady

I know how you must feel. I deal with medicaid and human resources all the time. The entire system is a mess. Human resources is extremely understaffed and overloaded in my area. Save every piece of paperwork you get from them.

a reply to: diggindirt

Time is a limited commodity. If you have something extra working against you like age or a disability it can become quite difficult to work around it. If said issue causes you to be less effective in the work place, then you need to bring even more to the table to balance things out, and that in turn requires even more of a time investment.

Wasting peoples time on dead end jobs, does no one any favors.

originally posted by: Montana
a reply to: Aazadan

Congrats and, wow!, great work!

When you find yourself in a good place, those of us who helped pay for your journey to success (and we appreciate your excellent effort to help yourself!) would hope you would use a little bit of your success to help others in return.

Thanks, and you're welcome!

I did the math, I'll pay more in taxes this year and the next two than I got in benefits across 14 years. From a tax and spend point of view that's a pretty nice win for the taxpayer. If even 5% of people do that instead of sit around doing nothing, we come out ahead.

As far as helping others in return goes, financial help from my end is getting easier but a lot of people don't just need financial help, they need actual help. I'm currently without students, but I generally try to be teaching 1 or 2 people what I know at a time. In a sense, simply doing a good job helps people too. In my division at work, I've been able to advance us enough that my work in the past few months has created two new positions for people (which went to classmates of mine), which directly means two new jobs for people who otherwise wouldn't have had one. It's not much, but it's a start.

Plans don't mean much until they're actually implemented but longer term something I would like to do is get involved with an adjacent towns community action and teach a free after work computer skills class (excel, access, etc), or something my town really needs which is some computer science transfer classes at the local community college, teaching a couple of those. We'll see if that ever happens though, time is a large constraint and that's never going to change for me.

a reply to: Lolliek

what i don't understand why if i have been working from 18 years old to 65 and been having a huge chunk of my wages paid into medicare for all them years do i still have to give 300 dollars a month out of my ss check and have to supplement with another 300 a month and another 100 for a prescription plan that i am on so few prescriptions i never hit 300 dollar deductable so i end up paying full price on my meds all year out of my pocket. meanwhile a couple i know had 3 kids in last 3 years and medicaid paid for all 3 baibies.

a reply to: proteus33

Did you know that having a baby in the US costs $32,000?

The "extravagant" birth the royal couple had for their daughter cost $18,000.