Not The Best Time...
To get dropped from my state health insurance plan, aka Medicaid/MassHealth. I got a letter a few weeks ago stating that I would lose my MassHealth because "You or someone in your family was offered insurance blah blah blah....your income is too high...blah blah blah. Oh, really? You mean to say that as long as I am pregnant I can get MassHealth, but when the baby is born our expenses stay the same? FUCK NO they don't my friend!
So, anyways I have requested a fair "hearing" to meet with a MassHealth officer/rep. I feel that my case is pretty strong, if I am forced to get onto Matt's insurance it will cost around $210 a month. That might not seem like a lot, but when it will put us in the red with our monthly expenses, IT IS A LOT.
Monthly Expenses
Utilities: an easy $400
Rent: $650
Car Insurance: $100
Diaper Service (cost is comparable to disposables if not less): $80
Food (organic nutritious pesticide free food): an easy $500 a month
Equals to: $1730
Now when our income is around $1600 a month after taxes.....we are in the red, if you take another $210 from that it's $1400 a month. Thanks a lot Mass Fucking Health! Plus, these expenses don't include gas for our cars (i don't use my car all that much, so that helps), this also doesn't include buying clothing for Holdyn (even if they are thrift bought), and activities that we want to take him to. Let alone if we want to go out to dinner as a family once in a while.
So, when it comes down to it, I really don't understand how they made their decision to cut me off from affordable insurance. Thankfully Holdyn is still covered, he is set for 2 years.
If there is anyone out there who knows anything about law and could give me some tips for when I go for my hearing (or have it over the phone), I welcome your thoughts!!! I can get a little hot tempered with these things, and I know that I need to keep my cool. If I am well prepared, that will help.
Has anyone else had this happen to them? After Birdie died, they did this to me, BUT they said I was eligible for a MassHealth program called Commonwealth Care, it was affordable for us at around $70 a month. But, $210 a month, that is not affordable and we will have to take even more from our savings. Our savings that we have been dipping into to pay our utilities, our savings that was meant for when we want to buy a house!
HELP!
p.s. I forgot to mention that in Massachusetts, if you do not have insurance you can receive a penalty on your taxes. Uhm, OK THAT"S JUST GREAT! How about if you CAN"T AFFORD IT!
12 comments:
I don't know a whole lot about it, but I do know that friends of ours didn't qualify for Mass Health due health insurance being offered at one parent's job, BUT Mass Health would pay for the insurance that was available to them. My guess is that they will do the same for you: pay the $210 for you, which still saves them money.
Also, have you thought about washing your own diapers at home? It's really quite easy, especially with prefolds, and after the first couple of months (when nothing is easy). You would definitely save money over the service.
Hey Lex!
Thanks for your comment. Yeah, I had to do some calling around today, and found that MassHealth will pay for most of the cost, leaving us to pay 94 bucks a month. But, they are investigating the insurance first. Anways, about the diaper thing. Is it cheaper to buy the prefolds and wash and dry? I was thinking we would end up with a higher utility bill with all the drying. How do you wash yours? Don't you have to do a lot of steps to get them washed and ph balanced?
We had been thinking of buying and washing, but are still naive about this. Any info/ feedback you have I welcome!
p.s. are you in ma?
I'm also paying for my own insurance. It costs me about $100 per month which is a huge chunk of my earnings. Couple of tips to reduce food spending.
1. Beans in a slow cooker. They are nutritious, filling, portion, and inexpensive.
2. Buy in season. I bought 40 pounds of sweet potatoes cheap when they were harvested in the fall. We eat many dishes with beans and sweet potatoes.
3. Make your own bread, tortillas, crackers. Easy to save 20 bucks a week making bread products at home, and it's more time then skill.
4. Grow a few herbs and use them to perk up the diet.
5. Hummus is inexpensive when made at home using chickpeas cooked in quantity, and frozen.
Cut the media to a minimum. Consider each phone, connection, and channel, and snip where you are able. It's painful, but likely to save a bundle.
Good Luck,
MM
We bought about 22 of the bum genius one size pocket diapers. i love them. We wash using charlie's soap, and i throw in oxyclean when i feel it's needing a boost (an extra poopy diaper)
it is really quite easy. =)
Erin
My friend Jen Hartley has Comm. care and I will ask her to e-mail you about it. This sucks!!
Ugh--I hate dealing with insurance issues. I hope you get it all straightened out.
As for the diapers, we used a service last time, but have been washing our own this time. It's only been a month so I haven't had a chance to compare our utility bill but I would be surprised if it jumped that much.
We have mostly prefolds supplemented by some Lovey Bums fitted diapers I borrowed from a friend. The fitted diapers definitely need some extra dry time.
all great ideas....
thanks girls! I think we might end up buying cloth diapers soon. Prob after this next month. How many loads of laundry do you all do each week of diapers?
ps we dont have cable or anything like that as an expense, my parents pay our cell bill because its a fam plan and cheap.
When both babies were in diapers i did it every 2nd or 3rd day.
with willem he doesn't seem to go through diapers as quickly, so we wash once a week. Soaking them in between washings so they don't reek.
Erin, I'm sorry you're getting jerked around. MA does suck.
Good luck at your hearing.
-Shannon
Hi Erin,
Sorry to hear about all of your troubles.
I can't help you with regard to insurance. We were in the same boat in MN, but we paid for the insurance which was over $300 a month and found the money elsewhere to pay for other things or cut back on quite a bit. We really lived quite a bare bones existence for a while trying to save and make as much extra money as we could.
That being said, buying your own cloth diapers would be cheaper than using a service. If the service costs $80/month, you could set yourself up with a decent supply of prefolds and knit some soakers for about that same price (using wool you already have) and then after that it would only cost what it costs you to wash them.
As for getting your diapers ph balanced, I don't know too much about that. We wash our diapers in Charlie's Soap. Last year I bought the 5 gallon barrel, so we're supplied for quite a while. I also add 2-5 drops of tea tree oil to our load. We do a dry diaper pail so I have to wash two times, which in MN was cost prohibitive (we ended up ditching our cloth diapers and going for Target brand disposables, which were cheaper to use than to wash our cloth - sad, I know), but here works, since I use the short cycle for the first cold wash and then our XXsanitary cycle for the next.
anyway, I'll put up a thing about cloth diapers on my website this week. I've been meaning to write about it and now I have the proper motivation.
Best of luck with whatever you do decide to do. Have you thought about going down to one car to cut on gas? (or do you have one car?, I can't remember) Also, for clothes that's all I used to ask for from the grandparents for Christmas, birthdays, and any other occasion where they might buy presents. Oh, freecycle - I got bags and bags of clothes from there.
Thanks Wendy!
I know we really should just buy the pre-folds. I have just paid for the last month of the service. So, now I just have to save a few bucks and get the pre-folds. I would LOVE to knit a few wool soakers, but we are not so happy with the wool soakers/covers as of late. We cannot get them to not leak! Even after drizzling on the lanolin and letting it soak in and dry on the soaker/cover. Plus, I knit SO SLOWLY!!! =)
I will look for your diaper post!!!
xoxoxo!!!!
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