<p>Better to have a job than be on Medicaid. California’s high taxes drove out Nissan, Occidental Petroleum and now Toyota. </p>
<p>I don’t know about Donald Trump, but my friend in Ma is a millionaire and he qualifies for Obamacare subsidies. Because of the Ma mess with their website, he is getting medicaid. </p>
<p>Here is the way I think he is doing it. He has a family of three which means he has to earn less than $78,000 a year to get subsidies. He takes his $3.5 million in cash and buys CDs at 2%. He doesn’t like stocks. If you do the math, low and behold, he is eligible for subsidies. I also thinks he has substantial money in retirement accounts where he might be buying stocks and bonds.</p>
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<p>How do you know the didn’t do it? The insurers had armies of people to do underwriting. Their profitability depended on separating the healthy from the unhealthy. Otherwise, for all they knew, they could be issuing insurance to a diabetic or someone with newly-diagnosed cancer. No, these very profitable companies didn’t get that way by blindly issuing insurance to anyone who asked. They checked. If not your records, then the detailed questionnaire that was part of the application.</p>
<p>The only industries remaining in Ca will be high tech and millions of minimum wage jobs in the travel, restaurant and tourist industries.</p>
<p>GP, how do you think your friend would like being asked about his assets on the application, in addition to his income? Because if this is a widespread problem, then that’s coming. And it should. </p>
<p>"Meanwhile, one of those Medicaid resister states, just attracted Toyota Corporate headquarter away from Southern California taking the 5,300 jobs with it. I don’t know how the states are going to afford increased numbers on Medicaid. Already it costs more than K through 12 education for the states. Once the federal money runs out, watch out. "</p>
<p>Their move had nothing to do with ACA or anything else other than a business decision to consolidate - and pocket $40MTexan taxpayer dollars.</p>
<p>“With our major North American business affiliates and leaders together in one location for the first time, we will be better equipped to speed decision making, share best practices and leverage the combined strength of our employees,” Lentz said."</p>
<p><a href=“Toyota's U.S. headquarters will move to Texas”>http://money.cnn.com/2014/04/28/autos/toyota-moves-headquarters/</a> </p>
<p>"Not a chance. "</p>
<p>So GP, what do you plan to do about it - instead of just whining on this thread? </p>
<p>LasMa, you are confusing medical records with a health questionnaire filled out by the applicant. Yes, everyone answered the questions on the questionnaire but they rarely asked for your medical records. At least in my case, they didn’t. Now when I applied for long term insurance, that was a different matter.</p>
<p>"I am having a hard time seeing how a truly wealthy person could manage to "structure’ their income so that it is under 133% of the FPL. See: <a href=“Federal Poverty Guidelines - Families Usa”>http://familiesusa.org/product/federal-poverty-guidelines</a></p>
<p>Don’t rich people have passive income? (Interest, dividends, etc.)</p>
<p>And if it is so easy for them to eliminate all their income, wouldn’t it be even more beneficial to them to do all that structuring so they don’t have to pay income taxes either? "</p>
<p>I doubt truly wealthy people would bother to structure their assets that way, it’s too much trouble, though who knows, some misers might bother with it. But the large numbers of people who will adapt accordingly will be those who are not wealthy. People will choose to retire earlier than they would have. One person in a two person family will choose not to work. People will not work for insurance benefits anymore. It is great to have the choice, but why should people now have that choice at the cost of the taxpayers (who still feel like they must work). And this is a huge entitlement, people will not give it up easily.</p>
<p>Those people that would have fallen through that hole that LasMa is talking about, should now be picked up by ACA subsidies, should they not? I cannot imagine why anyone could possibly be against having a reasonable asset test, particularly since there are so many subsidies now available. Actually, I can imagine why someone would be against any asset test. If the goal is to get as many people on Medicaid as possible, then they won’t care how they do it. Keep raising the income level, make it available to everyone they can, get everyone on it. Another path to single payer. Which I actually support, the option to go on Medicaid, with a VAT paying for it. But it seems a sneaky way to go about it.</p>
<p>“The only industries remaining in Ca will be high tech and millions of minimum wage jobs in the travel, restaurant and tourist industries.”</p>
<p>That must be why CA only has the 8th largest economy in the world. </p>
<p>“Over half of all people on any type of welfare are off it in less than 2 years. I don’t think that translates into people never wanting to get off benefits.”</p>
<p>Medicaid is a far larger benefit than any type of welfare. Food stamps pay out pretty little, and people can’t just stay on welfare without getting work for a generation anymore, it’s not an option (or is it)?</p>
<p>Just because you are ethical and will only use Medicaid while you truly need it, it is not reflective of how most people are. Soon enough you’ll be working full time in a great job with benefits, and will be supporting everyone else through taxes. </p>
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<p>I’m not confusing anything. I believe I pointed out to you that just because you didn’t undergo an exam does NOT mean they didn’t assess your health. I specifically mentioned questionnaires. You seemed to imply that you were able to get health insurance in the early 90s without them checking your health. And GP’s Razor states that if it happened to GP, it happened to everyone.</p>
<p>But again you are getting lost in minutiae. The point is that they wanted to know your health status BEFORE they issued the policy. For most, they took a chance that the questionnaire was completed accurately. For some, they checked records. If we had post numbers, I could refer you back to your post where you were disputing calmom’s statement that in Phase 1, your health was checked by questionnaire and sometimes by exam (although you seemed confused; you referred to the PPO era, and calmom was talking about the indemnity era). You piped in with “That never happened to me.” I know you meant they never did an exam or checked your records (that you know of – but again, what makes you think you’d know?). But believe me, buddy, before they took you on, they checked your health. They were comfortable that you were going to be profitable. And that was the big problem for a lot of us.</p>
<p>In case it’s not clear, GP, a health questionnaire and an exam and medical records all have the same purpose – to try and determine whether you’re going to be a profitable subscriber. </p>
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<p>I guess Medicaid is pretty good in Massachusetts, then, despite what detractors have said about its awfulness.</p>
<p>AlbionGirl, I doubt that Massachusetts is going after assets of someone who tried to sign up to buy insurance, but who was assigned to Medicaid by the state because of its incompetent bungling.</p>
<p>Maybe, but assuming someone is age 55 asset recovery likely won’t take place for another 20 -30 years. By that time the facts surrounding how someone came to get Medicaid may be long forgotten.</p>
<p>What will happen is the millionaires on Medicaid will get polite letters explaining that there was an error, and giving them a month or two to select new coverage. At the end of that period their Medicaid will be cut off whether they select new coverage or not.</p>
<p>That’s certainly what ought to happen, things don’t always run as efficiently as we might like however. There is precedent for welfare agencies not keeping up.</p>
<p>MA Department of Transitional Assistance</p>
<p>“Auditors identified 1,164 cases where recipients continued to receive a total of $2.39 million in benefits from six to 27 months after they were reported to be deceased. In a majority of sampled cases, store purchases and ATM transactions were made after the recipients’ dates of death, suggesting that unauthorized persons were using public benefits. In addition, the audit says that DTA paid at least $368,000 benefits to 178 guardians who were claiming deceased persons as dependents and $164,000 to 40 individuals being claimed by more than one guardian.” </p>
<p>“what makes you think you’d know?”</p>
<p>If you ever went through the underwriting for long term care, you would know the difference.</p>
<p>Five or six years ago we switched plans. There was a two page form with boxes to check. My H checked a box causing me to be denied. I resubmitted it without checking that evil box and was promptly approved. This wasn’t lying btw. But, it was pretty simple stuff. Nothing extensive or even particularly accurate. </p>
<p>LTC insurance is not the same thing as health insurance. Their risks are not the same, either. </p>