Medicaid

Oh hurray. Oh hurray. Medicaid may be on it's way.

Gag.

Offering a stranger your wrist, a butter knife, salt and vinegar is the same thing as applying for medicaid. I know that didn't make much sense.

Everything you've worked for your whole life is now in view and up for sale. Oh wait, not for sale, for the taking...for the government likes to "take". I realize that medicaid was set up for people who have nothing to be able to go to the doctor and to have their medical needs taken care of. At least I think this was what it was originally for. Now it's for the .05% of the population who truly need it, the people who work the system and the flat out cheats. If you don't fall into one of those categories, you are just out of luck. I think it's kind of like riding down the highway. The legal, posted speed limit is 65 mph. If you are doing 70, you feel ok with yourself. You don't feel like you are breaking the law but you are not being a pokey-butt either(kind of middle class). But wait!! Here comes the cheats who are speeding down the highway at 85 mph. Behind them are the ones who work the system, riding in a formation behind the cheats. They know the cheats will get pulled for leading the pack so they just ride along behind them. Now, you are still doing 70, seeing the pack coming up behind you. Oh crap! There's a guy coming up in front of you doing 55 mph because his car is old and broken down (the .05% I was talking about). What do you do? Do you slow down behind him, shield him from the cheats and system workers and risk your neck in the process? Do you slow a little but hop in line with the pack of people working the system behind the cheaters so that you don't get mowed over???

Yeah, I know, the analogy stinks.

When my dad went into the nursing home and on medicaid, my mother and I fought the system tooth and nail. I didn't want her to go into the poor house and on medicaid just because he did. (At the same time, the company she worked for went bankrupt and she lost her job.) Now I'm going through it again with my gd#1. This time though, I got an atty who is also a cpa to help me fight the system. Alas, between fighting the system and paying atty's fees, we're back to where mom and dad where when they started. Maybe not as bad though.

I spent my day today going between 2 attys and a funeral home. In my state, if you have to spend down your money to get medicaid, there are only a few things you can spend your money on (home improvements/remodeling, irrevocable pre-need funeral trust, buy a car if you don't have one already, atty fees and a few more things). The amount my gm#1 had to spend down wasn't as much as my mom had to spend down so we paid the atty. The rest of it went to the funeral home.

Let's see a show of hands.... how many people have actually gone in (before the person is deceased) and made funeral arrangements???

That's what I thought. Not many.

It's a smart thing to do. It's better to do it now than when the person is actually deceased and you are too upset to think straight. It's creepy as hell.

My gm#1 wanted nothing to do with it. I had to go to the funeral home by myself to set up these funeral contracts on both my gm#1 and my gd#1. I can't blame her. It was hard. I had to choose a casket for her and for him. I tried to keep in mind that she wouldn't like for it to be too expensive and she wasn't too into it being 'tasteful'. You always go into a funeral home with the idea that you want the *best* for your loved one but also want to keep in mind your budget. Usually the heart overrules the mind. Being that neither was deceased as of yet, I tried to use my mind over my heart.

In the end, nothing really matters. Not medicaid, not the casket or the vault that is 'sealed and airtight'. Ashes to ashes and dust to dust, we all go back to whence we came where there are no ideas of money, politics or even medicaid.....