The Dying Medicare Population

I've spent days in chaos via cell phone dealing with the state insurance program. My family is actually supposed to be automatically disqualified because my husband is a state employee (state trooper). Funny how they seem to think state employees must right away get good insurance; interest, since their self-funded insurance is not accountable to the state medical board or the dept of labor, so they can (and do) deny policies to anyone they damn well please. That includes me. They can also put notes on files saying to never pay claims of certain policyholders, to always deny them, and the boards can't do damn thing about it.

So I have Medicare and only Medicare which you already know. While in the hospital for 6 days a month ago the staff said to not worry about the state employee thing and required that I complete the application. I spent days on it, even one night spending a very painful 4 hours sitting up in a chair photocopying medical bills from the assigned two-month period. Yeah, there are that many and it doesn't matter what 2 month period they were to pick; it would all be the same.

I spoke to several people yesterday at the aid office who tried to figure out why my household showed 3 people instead of 4 (my daughter was missing), and 0.00 were allowed in medical expenses. "We can only count medical bills you MUST pay. Please speak with INSURANCE CARRIER to determine what you are responsible for."

Today I learned medical bills aren't counted at all.

Are not COUNTED?

What the FUCK?

(Sorry, if you know me personally you probably just had a heart attack by me typing that but there's no other suitable word I can pull out of my boiling soul right now.)

For Medicare patients, the state insurance assistance laws only allow them to count the premium that is taken out of our monthly Social Security Disability payment.

It didn't matter ultimately that they missed processing my daughter so we are down as a household of 3 (and much lowered the income guideline).

I became so angry I ended up crying like a baby, scared an employee half to death who transferred to me with no warning someone else.

Upon being asked what they COULD count if they can't include medical bills like 20% of 14 surgeries at typically $300,000 each (not including flights, hotels, transportation & food)?

They grew quiet by this point and apologized a few times, saying they wished there was something they could do.

There is an entire generation of people who had to go on SSDI in our 20's through no fault of our own, and we are turned down regularly by Medigap companies simply because of our age. I know full-well they deny us because obviously being approved in our 20's means there's something really wrong and if they were to provide us Medigap, they would have a great amount of expenses for the long-term.

And it's killing us and no one cares. How many besides me are also in need of surgery (in my case, plural) and they can't happen because of how the insurance industry in this country has gone from assuring us we would be taken care of to an attitude of "Fuck you, I'll deny you and approve some healthy person who will only have minimal cost to me so I can line my pockets some more!"