Just off the phone with Alejandra from DSHS (department of social and human services). Mom is officially on Medicaid starting May 1st. Medicaid is a federal program that’s administered by individual states. Each state does things a bit differently. Washington state is not likely much different than other states other than income and asset limits. In Washington state you must have an income under $2400 per month and have less than $2000 in assets. Mom is officially just below the income mark and has close to $50 to her name now.
My general observations about the process of being qualified.
Having accurate bank and financial records for the past five years is a big deal. You need to be able to show that you didn’t give away your money to anyone during the last five years.
The people that check and monitor this history are hard to get a hold off. They are swamped with cases.
They use a lot of technology in analyzing the financial history. Mom’s bank records were fed into a computer and a human didn’t think about the results. It was forwarded to me with a list of silly questions that were easily explained without much thought. Example: why did her net bank assets drop $3000 last January? Because that’s how much more her room and board were every month. Not sure why that particular month got identified. Nearly every other month was the same. There were a couple of other questions with regard to a plane ticket (Pennsylvania trip) a few years ago and how we handled the transition of her car as an asset, but otherwise no big concerns for us.
Everyone I had to work with at DSHS was very kind and respectful of the stressful situation. They were patient. They were easy to talk to.
What next? DSHS will determine how much money they will pay for my mom each month and how much she will have to pay herself. Medicaid has a contract with mom’s new home so they will take whatever the program will give. Her end will be about $80 less than what she gets paid from her retirement annuity each month. That way she will have a few dollars to buy some clothes or other needs. Alejandra told me that she could slowly pay me back over time for what I had to cover last month; but that would take years and I’m not too worried about it. Just overall relieved that it feels like she’s out of financial limbo for now. A huge relief knowing that we’ve crossed that bridge.
I still can’t help but be a bit nervous about the start of this. Until we complete a full cycle of the first month I’m sure I’ll worry a bit. I’ve dropped a note to the administration at the Cottages at Edgewood to make sure we’re all on the same page. If the first of the month rolls around and they try to auto-pay from an account with no money in it, that’s a problem. Likely easily rectified, but enough to make me want to check some boxes before we get there.
Good news from Aiyun this morning. Her back is doing better with rest. She’s able to work from home this week until Friday. She’s expecting a customer to arrive on site Friday and she serves as the liaison in answering their questions. It’s cool that she takes her job seriously and feels a lot of pride when she knows that she’s been a good employee. Recently she found a huge error in one of the engineers blueprints for a propulsion system design. The engineer blew her off, but her boss told her she saved the company a lot of money when she went over his head. More reinforcement in my mind that being good at math doesn’t necessarily make one a smart person.
As the weather improves our school is shifting my duty responsibilities. Now I get to cover an area outside the building instead of in the main atrium during some of my lunches. Odd thing. No one told the kids. They’re all still inside. I have the new pagoda area to myself to sit and chill in the shade on a perfectly sunny day. Not bad.
Dinner tonight was a chicken curry and rice. Not sure what I call the other stuff. Slimy veggies and mushrooms in an oil. Love the flavors.
Worth noting. Yes, a pack of Kleenex with dinner as my nose won’t stop running. Feels like someone turned on the faucet just enough to cause a steady leak. Head colds suck. And this too shall pass.