Last November, my wife’s doctor thought she might have an obstruction, so she had a CT scan. Turns out her appendix was very swollen (19 cm, that’s huge). She had an appendectomy. This is with no insurance. The company I contracted with had insurance available, but it wasn’t worth purchasing. It would have paid a couple of hundred dollars for the five figure visit.

When pathology came back, they had found cancer. It didn’t look like it had spread, but the only way to make sure and get it all was to have a right hemi-colectomy. These two surgeries were performed within 2 weeks of one another. This was very hard on our family. With a two week notice, a month before Christmas and during my wife’s second surgery, my workplace ended my contract. Since we didn’t have any income at the time, and since the heathcare.gov website said we would all be eligible for Medicaid, and that Medicaid would back pay 3 months from the time you put your application in, we thought we were in good hands.

After not hearing anything for a bit, we called and found out that our kids were covered by Medicaid, but we were rejected. This was based on the fact that we made more than the monthly income limit for eligibility in Alabama. How is that, I asked. I’m pulling in a whopping $265 a week in unemployment, and that’s our only income. The lady on the phone said, I’m sorry, the limit is $194.

My brain stopped functioning for a moment. If you make minimum wage and work more than 3 days a month, you break that limit. Something wasn’t right. Sometime after our conversation, my wife and I got back on healthcare.gov and started a new application, one for just us, since our kids were covered. Our cheapest coverage available was now over $400. On $1,060 a month income.

Then I found this site, and saw why – http://kff.org/medicaid/fact-sheet/where-are-states-today-medicaid-and-chip/

Alabama, and 24 other idiot states, decided to stand on their principals and not take part in the Expansion. The results of that meaningless and selfish strategy can be seen here, where it lists each state’s limits.

http://www.medicaid.gov/AffordableCareAct/Medicaid-Moving-Forward-2014/Downloads/Medicaid-and-CHIP-Eligibility-Levels-Table_HHsize4.pdf

We can’t even point to Mississippi on this one. Usually we’re #49 on every retard list published, but we’re #50 on this one. We’re the state with the lowest, and most ridiculous, income limit for parents being eligible for Medicaid.  $221. I’m not sure why the lady on the phone said $194, but maybe it’s dropped since this publication on Sept. 30, 2013. What this means, for all intents and purposes, is that no parents supporting themselves and their kids gets Medicaid in the state of Alabama. And if you look at the next column in the table, you’ll see that for this great state, if you aren’t a parent, the limit is $0. You can’t get Medicaid period.

If you look at this table, you can see that, with a few exceptions, all the states who didn’t participate in the expansion have absurd or meaningless limits. I’m having a hard time understanding why people wouldn’t take free money from the government to help the poor.

If my family and I decide to remain poor (and you Conservatives know us poor people are poor because we want to be), then I’m thinking we need to move to another state.