It has been some time since I last jotted a line. It could be out of nothing good to say or that depression sucks the life out of you! Anyhow, it has been a crazy few months. I don't want to be a complainer but I must confess, I've realized over the past couple of weeks that unless you are a very wealthy person who can afford ANYHTING or a very destitute person who can afford NOTHING, you are destined to be in for a struggle! I guess Middle class syndrome! You go to work and try not to be the slugs that smoke and suck down beer during the day sitting on their front porch while their kids run recklessly around the neighborhood dodging cars. You at least attempt to stay above board but fall further behind monthly, weekly and daily. When you are in need of extra help the "system" tells you that YOU make too much money!
You see the "system" has a guideline they work off. I guess I figured they must have some rules they follow, but hard to know what they are when I'm in the store and see the STUFF medicaid people buy. I think, "wow, how nice they can live this good and not spend an hour working for it". What I find out now is that they base everything on your GROSS salary. Not Net Pay which is many hundreds less than my Gross. Then they say "you Mrs. C. exceed the guideline, therefore for Medicaid to help pay your husbands nursing home expenses we will need to take all of his Social Security, all of his pension and some of your pay." "Oh and by the way, when we told you not to pay anything because Medicaid would go back 4 months and take care of the expenses, we forgot to tell you that the amount Medicaid would cover would be minus the monthly amount that we have figured for you to be responsible for." "So now Mrs. C because his expenses for February and March didn't exceed your required amount owed, Medicaid will not be picking up any bills for those months so you are responsible for paying those." "WWWWHAT????" "And when you look at the amount we have figured that you will owe each month and go back and multiply that by April, May, June, July and August you will owe the nursing home $", well I won't go into the exact amount, I'll just say it had 5 figures before the decimal point!
The state of shock I've been in since Friday has blurred my vision, caused extreme nausea and cramping, ungodly diarrhea and severe confusion thinking! I made the woman call me back twice to repeat how they computed their figures. Now, I do figures on a daily basis at work, what I would call Intermediate Bookkeeping, but I just couldn't get my brain to wrap around understanding how they came up with their figures. Then I sat down and looked at my daily expenses, taking out everything except my home, car, G&E, Insurance, phone & gas and I found I had enough left over to split up a Raman Noodles dinner into 31 individual portions but had to eliminate my prescriptions, vet bills, dog & cat food, my Dr. co-pays and any personal necessities such as toilet paper, soap & shampoo.
I believe now after going through the application process for Medicare Ins. and the application process for Medicaid approval, I can probably set up self-help classes in the evening to teach for a fee that would help defer expenses - No wait - what was I thinking - the more money I make, the more they will take from me because of the FORMULA!!!!!!!!!
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