My mission today: signing my grandmother up for Medicaid. Oh, help. I am so dreading this.
For the benefit of you non-American readers, Medicaid is a federal program for low-income seniors who can't afford, for example in the case of my grandmother, the cost of a nursing home. I'm sure it covers other things as well, but I'm totally unfamiliar with the program.
I am, however, about to get intimately acquainted with Medicaid and I am hoping it is not in the biblical sense. As in getting screwed. Because they have a reputation for being a bit SS-like in their quest to leave no stone unturned in squeezing every last nickel out of a senior citizen before Medicaid coverage takes over.
Last night I scrambled to assemble a folio of documentation, including my grandmother's divorce decree (she's been divorced from my grandmother since I was very young and besides he died when I was still in high school), every type of ID imaginable (thank God I actually had her birth certificate from 1912!), and THREE YEARS worth of bank statements.
They are going to examine every withdrawal and every deposit and I would not be at all surprised if I am asked to take a lie detector test regarding why I took out this amount or that amount ("WHAT? You didn't save grocery receipts for the past five years?"), or why I moved money from this account to that one in June of 2005. And I'm only half-kidding about that lie detector part.
I understand they are looking for people who, in anticipating of going on Medicaid, try to squirrel away their loved one's money so there is an inheritance left over... because if there is property or assets exceeding more than a few thousand dollars, Medicaid will require it all be sold and the proceeds turned over to the nursing home first. So I get that they are trying to look out for fraud.
But I only just found out she was going to need Medicaid coverage 3 weeks ago; before that, I thought the facility where she lives, which has a charitable foundation that has been covering the short-fall between her income and her living expenses (per the contract she signed when she moved in there 20 years ago), was going to continue to do what they've been doing. I thought I was only having to be accountable to this foundation; now I find out they will no longer cover her expenses and Medicaid is supposed to cover it all.
I have nothing to hide, but there is something about dealing with "The Authorities" that makes you FEEL like you might have something to hide, you just don't know it yet but they will FIND OUT and THEN you'll be sorry. It's the same feeling I get when I see a cop tailing me, even when I'm not speeding. It's the government, and "Big Brother" is always watching. Especially with the current administration's lust for wire-tapping and intercepting our e-mails.
So, I am off to the Medicaid appointment now, and I am sincerely hoping they are not going to give me a hard time about anything. I need for this entire thing to go smoothly, and this is the last big hurdle I have to clear this week.
Send some good vibes my way, please, that the Bureaucracy Gods will be smiling upon me today.
