Lately I’ve been dealing with insurance, a lot. I decided to bite the bullet early in the year and allow commercial health insurance to take effect. I realize for the average American, this is not a big deal. Most people are eager to get commercial health insurance. However I, as a Hemophiliac, have gone through most of my adult life avoiding it like the plague. Why? Well, I have the most expensive disease currently in the world and regardless of what anyone else might say Medicare and Medicaid are far better insurance plans than any normal health insurance could give.
Now the problem that I’ve been facing is this dilemma that I am 30 years old and need to both start looking at my future as well as looking at my present and basically growing up. I’m not sure if you can essentially grow up with the restrictions that Medicaid places on you. The restriction in particular is that you cannot have more than $2,000 in assets at any one time.
This is a horrible limitation. I am sure for the average person it makes a lot of sense. I mean if my neighbor becomes fairly well off, it might be understandable that he loses the medicaid that he is getting for being poor. But considering the cost of my disease this just doesn’t work. I can spend 2,000 in less than a month very easily. When I started working at Medicaid, one of the first things I did was looked at one of the bills that *I* produce every month. It was over $20,000. Stuff like this reminds me why it is that I need Medicare and Medicaid so much.
Yes, I do have a commercial insurance now. But the deductibles and coinsurance could see me paying $2,000 within the first month. This likely would cap the amount that I have to pay before they pay 100%. However, the problem here is first that I have to pay that much out of pocket in the first place so quickly. The second problem is that I know from experience that health insurances get sick of dealing with severe Hemophiliacs.
When I was a child, Blue Cross Blue Shield dropped my mom because she was needing too much coverage for me. (Not that she was asking for more coverage but that they were paying too much and they decided they didn’t want to.) Luckily, I was a child and did fall under medicaid or I’d probably be dead right now, and I’m not exaturating.
Medicaid has been good to me over the years and I appreciate all that they have done for me. They have single handedly proven to me time and again why a public health insurance for every American is a necessary thing. But how it is currently is just far too restrictive for those who actually need it. I mean $2000 is very easy to top.
I want to grow a 401k so that I don’t have to work until I die, and that counts against it. Yet, mysteriously my $35k school debt does not. I’m worth -$40k due to debt but I’m still close to being over my asset limit. That doesn’t make sense at all and it isn’t something I should be continuously having to battle. I can’t afford a new car because I can’t save up for it even though this is my only way that I can get money in the first place to get to work. I feel like a constant Brewster having to spend his money on junk just to keep my worth down.