With the Affordable Care Act, Medical (in California) is extending coverage to low-income people under age of 65 , who weren’t eligible before. We all know that by law everyone is supposedly to have health insurance.
Being a student with no or little income , I automatically qualify for Medical plan (aka free health insurance). Note that they didn’t give an option “to-buy-a-plan”. One of the fine print of Medical is that they may recover the costs from care beneficiaries 's estate after they die.
From my understanding, if I can’t afford a plan they will give me one for free and recover the costs later. It is like forcing me to buy a Lexus with a lifetime deferred payment. I don’t have an option not to buy a car , or to buy a Toyota only when I really need it, say when I am 40 for example.
Did I miss something or I understand the scheme correctly ?
“Medi-Cal”. If you leave out the hyphen, it makes your post kinda confusing.
But the clause you mention is there so they can cover the costs of long-term care patients. These are usually elderly people in the last months of their lives in nursing homes or the like. Medicaid covers something like half of all such spending, and often claims part of the estates to cover the costs.
It only applies if you die while institutionalized in such a facility, and if Medicaid is footing the bill for that institutionalization. So if you use Medicaid for a few years as a student, and then die fifty years later with some other insurance, its not like they swoop in grab your estate, which is what the OP seems to be picturing.
Also, you say you have “no or little income.” The mandate doesn’t apply if your income is so low that you’re not required to file a federal tax return, so you may very well have the option “not to buy a car” if you’re really, adamantly opposed to being on Medi-Cal.
Right now, your catastrophic health care costs are being paid for by the rest of us. Right now, the rest of us are paying for your health care in the most expensive way possible. By moving you onto Medi-Cal, we’re reducing the cost of you to the rest of us over the long term. In essence, right now you get a very expensive, but rather crappy car from us, and we are swapping you out with a cheaper car that runs better.
I don’t mind paying for poor people’s health care, but I’m sick of poor people telling me that I have to pay for it in the most expensive way possible.
