Shyeah!

"Shyeah!" is the sound B makes when he sings along with his little boogie woogie piano thing and the singer on the tape says "yeah!" after each song. In fact he makes just about every sound these days - from cars honking to cats meowing to other kids calling for their mothers at play grounds. He says back most words I say to him. I'm not 100% sure he understands any of it and isn't just mimicking noises - but sometimes he surprises me. The other day I asked him where he'd put his toothbrush, not expecting anything from him, and he ran into the other room and got it for me. I didn't even think he knew the word toothbrush. Yet another example of me underestimating how much he knows/understands!

I got a very disturbing message from MediCal. I thought I was all set to go in there with my new profit & loss statement reflecting my lower income to try to get out of that crazy $2800 monthly deductible; then I get a message from the woman I'm actually meeting with saying I need to bring my complete tax return with my Schedule C so she can sit and go over my deductions one by one and decide which ones they accept and which they don't. So basically they expect me to endure a humiliating tax audit. This happened when I first tried to get Healthy Families back when B was born - some guy on the phone started going over my tax return line by line and telling me they don't accept my deductions. Can this process get any more invasive and awful??? Well, just for the record I have no intention of bringing my tax return. I'll bring what the first person I talked to told me to bring - my profit & loss statement, even my bank statements for the last few months showing my almost non-existent income. But it's pretty disheartening - I thought this would be an easy fix but now I'm worried there is no solution to our insurance woes - and I mean no solution. Here's the problem:

B and T can have free MediCal - but I have to meet nearly $3000 a month in costs before anything is covered.

I can't get B or T anything like my excellent policy. Apparently it only applies to me - under the ACA all low income kids are automatically shipped over to MediCal...and then stuck with this $2800 "share of costs" per month.

My broker sent me other policies I could buy out of pocket for B & T - and they are all terrible. Starting around $120 a month for the shittiest catastrophic plan possible, that covers nothing and has massive deductibles. So I could be out $300-$400 a month to cover the kids and still be stuck paying tens of thousands if there's a major illness, accident, etc. And this is affordable health care??? 

So I'm pretty distraught. If MediCal won't accept my claim of a lower income based on my P&L, I'm really, really stuck - I absolutely cannot afford two full price premiums for the kids, especially ones that leave me open to such enormous risk. I just don't know how I went from having this excellent policy for B that cost almost nothing and covered everything, to this pile of shit.

I am so terrified of this meeting Thursday. I'm so afraid the person I'm going to meet with is going to be some hard-on determined to prove I'm lying rather than try to figure out a solution. I'm afraid I'm going to lose it and start yelling or crying. I'm afraid when they ask me my yearly income I'm going to say the wrong number and completely screw myself, and then there's no going back. 

And guess what? If I decide to shell out the big $$ and buy new policies for B & T, I have to do it in one day since the window to apply closes on Friday, the day after my meeting. I'm in hell.