Health Insurance Cha-Cha-Cha

I received a phone call today from a gentleman from the Minnesota Care state appeals office. He is the one who will be representing Minnesota Care in my appeal against their rejection of my reapplication. He said the whole basis of their argument is Minnesota state statute number 256L.07, subdivision 2, paragraphs A and C. He said they are very black-and-white, stating that if an employer pays at least 50% of the cost of coverage for employee they are ineligible for Minnesota Care.

Here's the problem I'm running into, and this is why I'm appealing it. Under normal circumstances, my average semimonthly net pay is $998. My share of the premium to cover both me and my son is $177.12 semimonthly. Both of us have chronic medical conditions that require maintenance medications, therapy, and regular office visits. The cost out of pocket for my and my son's medications runs about $1200 a month. The deductible for the insurance plan that my employer provides is $1500 per person. This means that before my insurance kicks in I will have put out $3000 in deductibles.

There's no way under normal circumstances that I could put that kind of money out. That would leave me about $600 per month to cover everything that isn't insurance payments and medications until that deductible is met. As an added bonus I'm on workers comp.

The gentleman from the appeals office did give me some helpful information. I will be getting this in a letter as well but it's nice to have it in front of me now. My appeals hearing is on April 11. It will be a phone hearing apparently. He also gave me the name of the judge will be hearing this case.

I do have some small shreds of hope that maybe I can succeed in this appeal. This judge was a cosigner in a letter that was written to Speaker of the House Boehner regarding his record of cutting the budget for vulnerable and poor people. Reading the entirety of the letter gave me hope that perhaps this judge will look at the spirit of the law rather than the wording of the law. Also, I sent an email to my state representative touching on the same things I mentioned above and asking for any help that she could provide. After I sent this email I took a closer look at her biography. She's on the state house committee for health and human services finance, and she's a practicing psychologist. I don't know if there is anything that she can do to help me in my current matter; however, she is one of the people who is fighting to get increase in wages for human services workers like me. I feel I at least have a couple of sympathetic ears in this matter.

This, incidentally, is why I was so freaked out at first when I broke my wrist on March 14. If this had happened outside of work and it wasn't covered by workers comp, I have no insurance to cover that injury, the surgery I had, any upcoming therapy I may have to have, and I would have had no income coming in because I don't have enough sick time nor do I have long-term disability. I would have had to just try to pop it back into place, strap it up, suck it up and go back to work. That would've been ugly. If I had been turned down for workers comp I don't know what I would've done. In that respect I consider myself very blessed.

Also, as a member of the working poor, currently unable to work not only my primary job but also unable to even think about getting a second job right now, I've had to think about other ways of may be bringing in a little bit of money because any little bit helps. This is why I added Google AdSense to my blog pages. I know I just started this blog and I have no regular readers, but who knows, maybe I'll luck out and get some pin money out of it.

Here is the link to the letter that I was talking about above: Catholic Academics Challenge Boehner

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