Going to be trying to qualify for MediCal today, my county's only real low wage health care plan. More on my experience inna minnit.
...
Well, so here's what I learned. MediCal is one of the best state sponsored health care programs in my entire country. If you are between the age of 21 and 65, you aren't on long term disability, and you aren't pregnant then you can never qualify for MediCal under no circumstances. You could be dying of typhus in a gutter after being nominated for the Nobel prize, and they'd just kick you a few times and leave you to die. "Long term disability" is another word for Social Security, and you might know how hard it is to get paid by that.
What I was unknowingly trying to qualify for was this particular hospital's private system, wherein patients who cannot pay due to low wages are allowed to purchase cheap insurance from the hospital itself.
That's right. The hospital is selling medical insurance.
So, the only single Federal medical assistance program is called Medicare. If you're not over 65, there is nothing to help you there. California has MediCal, but only for quadrupalegiacs and encouraging girls to get pregnant. Beyond that... I'm up against another wall.
Even worse, they threw more bureaucracy at me! To qualify for the hospital's low cost insurance, I have to submit a claim for unemployment benefits to the unemployment office, have it rejected, and show the hospital a letter saying that I don't get any money after all.
So no MediCal, and even if I get insurance with the hospital it only applies to that particular private hospital, not to anywhere else such as my college counseling department, or any of the programs there that help broken people keep a job. I can go to that particular hospital, if I pay the $50 insurance, but only that hospital, nowhere else.
And that is why we the people of the USA need universal health care.
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