Medicaid as primary insurance?

baskrox

Mon, Jun 14 2010, 9:12 am

Cookies n Cream

Mon, Jun 14 2010, 9:23 am

[quote="baskrox"]We qualify for medicaid and we've been using it as secondary insurance for a while. We still kept our primary insurance - bluecross blueshield. now my dh wants to cancel primary insurance b/c medicaid will cover everything. Is this a bad idea? not to have any insurance other than govt insurance? anyone have experience with this? THANKS.[/quote

I thought that you may not have another insurance if you have MCD.
I know there are some rare exceptions, but that's usually the general rule.

amother

Mon, Jun 14 2010, 12:38 pm

[quote="Cookies n Cream"]

baskrox wrote:

We qualify for medicaid and we've been using it as secondary insurance for a while. We still kept our primary insurance - bluecross blueshield. now my dh wants to cancel primary insurance b/c medicaid will cover everything. Is this a bad idea? not to have any insurance other than govt insurance? anyone have experience with this? THANKS.[/quote

I thought that you may not have another insurance if you have MCD.
I know there are some rare exceptions, but that's usually the general rule.

incorrect!!!

I had a individual plan insurance. when we applied for medicaid they gave it to us as a secondary insurance since we already had insurance (this way the goverment pays out less- but we didnt have to pay a copay). after a couple months we dropped the other insurance and now have medicaid as the primary. biggest problem we have found with it is that many drs wont take medicaid as a primary while they may take it as a secondary- so make sure your drs accept medicaid before dropping your other insurance. if they do, then it def saves you some money....

Cookies n Cream

Tue, Jun 15 2010, 9:56 am

[quote="amother"]

Cookies n Cream wrote:

baskrox wrote:

Interesting.
Thanks for the info.

My question is why would somebody still keep their original non MCD insurance, if they are eligible for MCD?
Aren't they paying for it?

613

Tue, Jun 15 2010, 10:18 am

My dh is very involved with health insurance, but not as much in the NY area.
He strongly advises people to keep their personal insurance plans and not just rely on medicaid.
The biggest reason is that if ch'v you get some condition while not on your insurance and then either you lose medicaid (make too much money or move to a state with different restrictions) or it doesn't cover enough, you will have a hard time getting regular health insurance back because you now have a pre-existing condition.
The thing that I would suggest is to keep your plan but see if you can switch to a higher deductible. If you switch to the highest deductible possible, you'll pay the lowest premium. You won't have to worry too much about the out-of-pocket costs because the medicaid will cover it. Otoh, if you lose medicaid and then want to switch back to a lower deductible, you will need to re-apply and face the same possible problem that I mentioned above. So switch to a higher deductible, but not TOO high

Hashem_Yaazor

Tue, Jun 15 2010, 10:32 am

(And you never know when medicaid decides to kick you off due to stupidity. Like a US passport was not sufficient ID they decided in the middle of my coverage since I was born in Canada Confused

I wasn't re-instated until I gave them a birth certificate as well. I got kicked off with no warning just because they didn't bother reading their own rules....

We have BC/BS with a high deductible, and Medicaid as secondary.)