Back in May, my wife became unemployed and I was forced to take medical insurance from my employer due to the individual mandate. Which meant that I had to remove myself from our ACA marketplace plan and because I was the primary, we had to cancel the entire plan and start over with a new application.
Because I was the only wage earner when applying for a new marketplace plan, I could only buy insurance for my wife as I earned too little, according to healthcare.gov to be able to buy insurance for my kids. My kids were without insurance for 3 months as the ACA website automatically passed my application onto Medicaid/Kancare and medical insurance through my employer is too expensive for the kids. My wife is now back in employment and has insurance through her employer, which hopefully has better medication coverage than marketplace insurance through Coventry Healthcare of Kansas.
So now I have to start the process all over again to get my kids medical insurance through the marketplace. Assuming I qualify for special enrollment period, which I should as I have received a letter from Kancare today saying we have been denied. 2 weeks ago, we received a letter from Kancare saying they needed more evidence of our income, this obviously has changed since applying, we now longer qualify for Kancare so we ignored the letter. Now I have to brace myself the penalty “tax” next March.
Now, to the point of this blog; the ACA has numerous flaws, in this case, blocking me from buying insurance for my kids because of my income. Instead forcing me to apply for Medicaid/Kancare through their system. For those not familiar with Kancare, the Kansas legislature elected to hand administration of the Medicaid program to “for profit” companies, Amerigroup, Sunflower and United Healthcare. Which has been failing the people of Kansas since January 2013, who would have predicted that? (sarcasm)
This issue is my kids went uninsured for months because Kancare are so fucking slow to react. We heard nothing from them until September 15, 2015, when they received our initial application June 12, 2015, that’s 3 whole months without any contact. The September 15, 2015 request for proof of income letter, which was received by us September 23, 2015 wanted the required information by September 25, 2015.
This is not our first run in with Kancare, back in mid 2014, suddenly without any notice they revoked coverage for our autistic son despite no changes in our circumstances. Which meant all his therapy sessions stopped immediately, his therapy sessions are too costly to cover out of pocket. All this is caused by the Republican house and senate at federal and state levels giving tax breaks and subsidies to billion dollar companies while simultaneously defunding government programs that millions rely on.
I know that it’s unlikely, but I truly hope that America votes in Bernie Sanders as president. The Constitution starts with “we, the people”, not “we, the corporations”, our elected government should be doing things that benefit everyday Americans instead of lining their own pockets, taking money from interests they are supposed to be regulating, which somehow is legal in the United States of America.
Well, if my company had taken off, I’d offer you and your wife a job with us and you’d be having none of those problems whatsoever. The taxes are a bit higher, but you get completely free health care for the kids, both dental and other medical issues. Your wife and yourself would get rather low cost medical coverage, without having to buy some massive insurance that don’t cover anything when push comes to shove. The American system just doesn’t work for the average joe, plain and simple.