This will almost certainly turn into a rant, so if you don't like my rants...you might want to move along.
For a few months last year, I was on Medicaid. The simple fact was that it was too expensive to put me on to Rebecca's insurance. Doing that would have meant taking food from our kids' mouths. The actual truth is that as a family of five, we could have all qualified for Medicaid, but we wanted to keep private insurance for Rebecca and the kids because we wanted to keep our regular doctor, and we felt a lot more comfortable with having the choices a private insurance company offers as opposed to having to go to a Medicaid doctor. Plus, we weren't really looking for charity. We believe in hard work, and we felt that we didn't need a government "hand-out," as some Republicans would call them.
So, I was on Medicaid and then I never responded to a letter that I didn't even get, so I was booted off the program. I wasn't too worried about it. Sure, we had to pay a small fine on our taxes, but it wasn't really a big deal. Our income is low enough that we qualify for a lot of tax breaks, so whatever.
Now, with my health deteriorating faster than I expected, I decided I would get on Medicaid again...just in case. I was denied because I make too much money...
Some people reading that might just shrug it off, but I work around 15 hours a week at barely above minimum wage, so how I could make too much money escapes me. Even if you add in what I make from writing, editing, and game design, as well as what Rebecca makes, we're still well below middle class for a single person...let alone a family of five.
So, how in the hell do I not qualify? I did some research and found out that our income is actually low enough for me to qualify, so why didn't I? The only answer I have is that the government systems are entirely corrupt. This isn't our first experience with these types of problems. When the Office Depot I worked for closed and I was laid off, I tried to get unemployment, and it took me more than six months to get that. During that time, we had to get food stamps. There was simply no choice, but we got booted out of that program after they sent us a letter saying that someone else was living in our home...someone we'd never heard of. Our calls and letters to the office were never returned. Finally I got unemployment, and we let it go. Eventually, I got off of unemployment when I was hired by OfficeMax, and just so that people understand that we aren't the type of people that abuse the system, I was making more on unemployment than I was at OfficeMax, but again, we didn't want the handout, so we decided it was better for me to be working, even if it meant our family would have to struggle more.
So, I ask again, how screwed up is this system in Colorado that I can't qualify for Medicaid when we have to struggle to pay every single bill we have? We don't go out to eat all the time. We don't waste money. We don't do drugs, drink, or even smoke, and yet somehow we keep getting screwed over by the system.
At this point, I'm about ready to tell them all to go screw themselves, pay to see a doctor, and have him declare me as partially disabled (since work does cause me more pain, and I am having more and more trouble doing my job), and then collect disability until I can get surgery. And as a disabled person, the government would probably have to help pay for the surgery, and that's going to cost them a hell of a lot more than giving me medicaid on the off chance that I
might need to see a doctor...
No matter what the government says, it's always the poor that get screwed.
