Please Help MacNTosh
For those of you who are not familiar with our clanmate MacNTosh, he has two children with special needs and lost his job last week. Rather than attempt to do justice to him with a recap, I am just going to cut and paste a couple of his posts here. Please chip in some money for him.
Hey guy’s most of y’all know I recently lost my job. On top of this wonderful news I have my two children each with special needs of their own. Well my daughter has an opportunity to have a procedure done that will allow her to walk like most “normal” childrens patterns for about five year. This procedure is only done by five doctors in the world and one of them is about 300 miles away. We have it scheduled for late July, but in all honesty we are going to need some help with lodging, gas and food.
This being said, I have created a ChipIn page to help us with these costs if you are interested then please click the following link: ChipIn
Just to share a little back story on Medicaid, Social Security and WIC (The Food Stamp People)
When we found out Aidan was going to have multiple issues and need nursing on his release we were put in touch to start working on getting him Medicaid through Social Security. When I applied I also spoke with them about my daughter as CP is suppose to be an automatic approval. Not so if you are the working class poor in America.
Over the last year I have made about 40K in base salary with commission. This is too much to get benifits for Mya even though I pay 400-600 a month in therapy and such, cover her under our family insurance at $1200 a month and lose many pennies to deductables and our tax system. I was lucky with Aidan however. Since he was living at the hospital, my salary, retirement and cars where not taken into consideration. He was granted SSI benifits, $30 per month and Medicaid, which if we did not have could not afford to take care of him. He has 6-8 different therapy sessions per week, left the Hospital with a 1.8 million dollar bill and we still have some creditors calling for deductables and such that medicaid didn’t cover because we found out to late to apply in order to cover his first couple of months.
So medicaid is still based on salary, but we are willing to give it away to many people that don’t even pay taxes, as I see it every time I have to visit SSA. I do lose his benefits however in months that have three paychecks, as those months I make too much money. That is two months this year.
On top of this is WIC which provides his formula. When you only have 25% of your small intestine you don’t eat like other kids. His formula costs 8.50 per can and he uses four a day. We are lucky enough that we get to drive to the “nice” part of town, sign our vouchers, sit in a room where no one speaks english, and are the one’s stared at. Heck last time they called numbers and such in Spanish first and when no one stood up, that’s when they looked and saw the white girl in the corner and announced it in english.
All this being said, our medical system is really screwed up. SSA told me the best way to insure my daughter would be for me to give custody to my wife and divorce her. This way they could be covered since she is a stay at home mom, who works harder then most with all of their therapys.
I know their is lots of spelling errors and such, and quite a bit of rambling, but hopefully I have shed a little light on my situation.
If you have quesitons, feel free to ask. I’m willing to answer it all from the inside as the “working” poor in America.