Tag: Health

Understanding Medicaid and Medicare and Proposed Changes

Understanding Medicaid and Medicare and Proposed Changes

by MichelleMcHatton

The below document is something I received from The Arc of Massachusetts. Although it mainly discusses Medicaid and Medicare in Massachusetts, in general, it applies to anyone who receives these benefits no matter where you live in the country.

I thought it may be helpful for others to read and to understand the difference between the two programs and to encourage you, if you haven’t already, to contact your congressional representatives and speak out about any possible changes or cuts that they may want to make.

As an addendum: If Congress passes their shit “bill” that will in effect make drastic changes to Medicare and Medicaid and you become someone who is now responsible for your relative who has been forced to leave a nursing home due to the cuts, here is what you will need to do:

Save any receipts/bills for costs you may incur due to needing to have a relative move in with you (i.e., anything from building a space for them to live to PCA care, costs of medical equipment, medicine, etc.). Seriously. Because what you will need to do with all those bills/receipts is to send them to CONGRESS AND SHITHOLE. And you will need to DEMAND they pay them. Because THEY are the ones who will have created this burden for you. The burden that you will now be forced to figure out how to pay for, when you yourself more than likely are on Medicare or Medicaid and/or have a limited budget. THEY will be the ones responsible for paying for it. NOT YOU. This will be THEIR mess. ALL OF THEM! This is what I plan to do. And if I get questioned regarding the payments, I will tell them it’s in the hands of CONGRESS AND SHITHOLE. YOU WILL NEED TO CONTACT THEM! THEY ARE THE ONES WHO WILL BE PAYING FOR IT, SINCE THEY TOOK AWAY THE VERY THING THAT WAS PAYING FOR IT AND I DON’T HAVE THE MONEY TO PAY FOR IT!

Because WE are not billionaires. THEY are. And if THEY are going to get MORE MONEY from taking things away from most of America, THEY can afford to pay our expenses. Shit, most of them could afford to support every living person in the United States and STILL have money left over. DIPSHIT alone could do that!

Medicaid-Fact-Sheet-February-2025-updateDownload
My Health Insurance Story

My Health Insurance Story

by MichelleMcHatton

In the wake of the killing of United HealthCare’s CEO, many have been sharing their health insurance stories on social media.

Well, I’m going to share my health insurance story with you. Because I want you to know and understand that not having something covered that you want, need or feel you need to have covered isn’t always in the hands of the insurance company.

Twenty-two years ago my husband and I were trying to start a family and, as I’m sure you can sense where this is going, were having difficulties in doing so. I have a condition called PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome or disease) and one of the issues with it is infertility, which can be anything from irregular menstrual cycles to heavy menstrual cycles and lots of stuff in between.

Eventually we were referred for infertility treatment. Which is great if you can afford it on your own or if your employer offers it as part of their health insurance plan. Well, guess what? The employer I was at, which was an employer I was planning to leave as they were a shit employer, did not offer infertility treatments as part of the health insurance plan. Although the insurance company did offer infertility treatments (this is what I was told when I called the insurance company; but I was also told that my employer had not opted for that particular option). The employer had just opted for a plan (probably a cheaper plan) that didn’t offer that option.

As a friend in Human Resources explained to me, just about every year companies review the health insurance plans they offer their employees and decide what is affable and affordable for the company and the employees. A decent company will look at the kind of employees they have (how many have families, women, men) and based on the percentage of population will often decide what kind of coverage they should offer. The health insurance company they use (could be Blue Cross, Cigna, Tufts, you name it) will present them with many options (she told me the company she is HR rep for uses a health insurance company that offers twenty options). From those options, the HR people decide what is best for the majority of their employees.

I eventually found an employer that did offer infertility treatments as part of their health insurance plan and, as they say, the rest is history. Although I did go through two rounds of infertility treatments, neither was successful. As it turns out, I became pregnant on my own (which I attribute to the help of OTC Estroven–but that’s another story for another time). And nine-teen, almost twenty years later, here we are!

Fast forward to 2014 when my daughter was diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum. Only a few years before my state of Massachusetts had passed a law that required private health insurers and state health plans provide coverage for the diagnosis and treatment of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).  And in 2014 the Autism Omnibus Bill was passed, which led to MassHealth starting to cover Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) in 2015. ABA is a therapy that is often prescribed for people with autism. So there are ways that states themselves can actually help people get the health insurance coverage that they need and/or want.