Medicaid Debacle

[ameneses54]

In Florida, about 2 months ago I processed an app for a 28 year old mother and her 3 year old son, the eligibility results didn't give any subsidy to mom who was at 300% of the FPL and the minor was referred to medicaid.
Why the eligibility results I don't know. I was told that somebody from the Marketplace told the mom that if the minor was eligible for medicaid (he is not), she doesn't get a subsidy----WTF!
Fast forwarding, they also instructed that she should apply separately to medicaid and present the results to the Marketplace in order to review the results.
According to the app, as I chose to forward the data of the minor to "Healthy Kids", it should have been done months ago. Actually, it looks like the marketplace doesn't send anything to Healthy Kids or Medicaid and if you go to the web page link the Marketplace has on the part referring to medicaid and fill the app, it's completely useless, you have to do it on the Medicaid page.
Well 2 months have passed and still can't get through this hurdle.

 

[healther]

Have you deleted the application and re-processed?

 

[taterpeeler]

that wont work.. obama lied about informing the states medicaid depts... i was told this today by congress after weeks of discussion with my GOV, AG, State rep and congressional delagation... system error is obamas response. looks like your system error will get a kid killed.. congrats hoss

 

[AllenChicago]

Like Tater, I learned a few things this week after speaking with Govt officials and legal eagles.

1. Tucked away in the +22,000 page ACA law is wording which says that if a child under 18 can get health coverage cheaper through a state program, that child cannot be on the policy that parent(s) purchased ON the Marketplace.

2. Our (IL) state officials were not aware of this Affordable Care Act "feature". They were under the belief that the only children who would be shunted to All-Kids/Medicaid were those who came from homes earning under 138% of FPL. They were wondering why the Federal Marketplace alerted them to be prepared to receive over 170,000 children to be enrolled in AllKids/Medicaid. Illinois officials have received this "heads up", but no actual children (or adults) to enroll, or money from Washington to hire enrollment help, or pay the medical providers in 2014.

I'll place more Illinois specific info in the Illinois forum. Just posting this brief synopsis here to share a bit of what was learned this week.

The bottom line is that there will be children and adults DYING because there aren't nearly enough qualified Medicaid providers to treat the flood of new patients! Can a President be brought to trial for involuntary man/woman/child-slaughter in a situation like this? After all, he's the brainchild of this hideous law.
ac

 

[taterpeeler]

my comment about getting a kid killed was based on the false assumption that the wording on the federal website stating "your state agency will contact you" was incorrect and we found out there was a "system error" so late in the game no kid has enough time to enroll. Now lets say a kid that was covered in 2013 and changed plans to a ACA plan but the kid tossed to chip/Medicaid and never enrolled has chemo on Jan 3rd... no coverage, no chemo... dead kid

 

[Yagents]

I wonder if the MSM will pick up these kinds of stories......

 

[Ann H]

This system suffered glitches, and it suffered from lies, but two of them will cost people their lives and their fortunes.

The first lie/glitch is about the cancelled policies, with a lack of time and a working website for enrollment in new plans.

The second lie/glitch is throwing kids to Medicaid, telling them they will be contacted, and they aren't enrolled in the first place.

People can die over stuff like this, and/or lose their homes and savings trying to pay cash for the medical bills.

If any of us, as licensed agents, did something like this we would lose our licenses and be in a major lawsuit.

I'll bet the administration will try to spin this as the fault of the states that did not expand Medicaid. But the administration knew about this all along, and did NOT properly communicate it to the American people, nor to the states running Medicaid, nor to the people who think they are enrolled and will find out that they are not.

I am DEEPLY concerned about this. I can't stress how much this upsets me.

 

[unic.consulting]

Ann,

I think you give the government too much credit. I don't think they did realize these issues as much as we wish they did. My guess is that the administration knew that this was too confusing for them, so delegated the work to underlings that they trusted to get things done. Obviously, they didn't hire insurance brokers.

Now that's not to say that there are not going to be a lot of lawsuits against the government, but it's going to be found to be due to incompetence not fraud.

 

[goillini52]

Ann,

I think you give the government too much credit. I don't think they did realize these issues as much as we wish they did. My guess is that the administration knew that this was too confusing for them, so delegated the work to underlings that they trusted to get things done. Obviously, they didn't hire insurance brokers.

Now that's not to say that there are not going to be a lot of lawsuits against the government, but it's going to be found to be due to incompetence not fraud.

They've shown a pattern through this whole mess! I think they knew about this...they knew exactly what they were doing!

 

[Ann H]

They knew.

They pretended that President Obama didn't know the website wouldn't work. Pleeeeeeze. Everyone on this forum knew. The insurance company executives knew. Website designers knew.

They pretended President Obama thought everyone that liked their plan could keep it. Pleeeeeeeze.

They pretended President Obama thought everyone who liked their doctor could keep it! Please! I was writing 2 years ago to be prepared for narrow networks.

They knew. I don't know how long they can pretend that the President is uninformed.