Health Care Saga Over...

In a dramatic end to the health care saga, I called AHCCCS in the morning to find out why we weren't allowed to see the doctor when we were supposed to. I guess they hadn't signed us up for a health plan yet. Nevermind they ask on the application form if you have a health plan that you'd like to go with...

They told me that it would take up to 72 hours for the information to filter to the health plan's computers, but I could take my daughter to the doctor anyway and they'd have to call to verify the insurance. Urgent care said that dd would have to be in the computer, but it was the fastest 72 hours I have ever heard of, because she was already in the system, less than 2 hours after I had gotten off the phone with the health insurance people.

At the pharmacy, it was another story. Evidently the pharmacy side of the insurance and the doctor side don't talk with each other. Fortunately, one person at Walgreen's was knowledgeable enough and knew how to get it fixed, but it required a 45 minute wait. I'm okay with waiting as long as it works out eventually. I had a coloring book for dd with me so she was okay too.

So now she's on cefdinir once a day and is taking tobramycin ear drops 3 times a day. Hopefully her hearing will return to normal shortly.

Arizona's State Health Care: The Good And The Bad

Me and the state of Arizona have been duking it out over health insurance since last May when dh lost his job back then. The program, AHCCCS, is a really great program once you can jump through the hoops to get in... but getting through all the bureaucracy is a mess. Today, I thought my woes with getting into their system would be over... but no such luck. I have to call them on Tuesday and yell at them (not literally, but figuratively).

We are previous customers of the Arizona state health care system. They know who we are, we have insurance cards, etc. I do want them to verify who everyone is and if they are eligible. Last year we had to show them our passports to verify that we are US citizens. Great! Since this program is tax-subsidized, I don't want to have to pay for non-citizens to get in this system.

The problems started in January when dh started working for the state. They have a good health insurance program, so we went with their program, as I'd rather not use the state's program if I don't have to. I suppose since he was working for the state, the health insurance money came from the same source, but I guess that doesn't matter. Even though that was what we were supposed to do, it turned out to be a big mistake.

When dh lost his job, I immediately went to the office to reapply for health insurance. They told us that my son still had health insurance and was never dropped from coverage (since he is an infant under 1 year old, he had no premiums).

Later on that month, I took my baby to the doctor, using our health insurance card that supposedly he had. The doctor told us that he didn't have any coverage... so I used my other health insurance card from dh's job that was supposed to have been expired. Funny how the expired health insurance card worked, and the "active" health insurance card did not.

My dh got a new job about a week later, and about a month after that, we were told that they would deny us for health insurance if we didn't apply for unemployment and food stamps as well. What one has to do with another I don't know. So we were denied and we had to reapply.

Another month passes... around early August we find out that finally we were approved for health insurance. Everyone except for my son... who was supposed to be covered all along but now is still stuck with no insurance. So I call the office to find out what was going on.

Monday
Me: I'd like to find out why my infant son wasn't approved for coverage.
AHCCCS: You'll have to talk to your eligibility specialist, Nicole. Here's her number... lemme transfer you.
[transfer goes to a number that doesn't exist. I try calling the number myself and nothing]
[I call back]
Me: I'd like to find out why my infant son wasn't approved for coverage.
AHCCCS: He wasn't approved for coverage because he already is approved for Medicaid.
Me: I've been to the doctor twice for him and they keep telling me that he doesn't have insurance.
AHCCCS: You'll have to talk to your eligibility specialist, Nicole.
Me: I already called her at xxx-xxx-xxxx. The number doesn't work.
AHCCCS: oh she has a new number. It's xxx-xxx-xxxx. Let me transer you.
[transfer doesn't work. I call the number back and nothing.]
[so I call back]
Me: I would like to find out why my son wasn't approved for health insurance. I already tried calling my eligibility specialist and she is not answering her phone.
AHCCCS: Let me transfer you to her supervisor then. His number is xxx-xxx-xxxx.
[transfer goes to an answering machine. I leave a message and nobody calls back.]

Tuesday afternoon
Me: I would like to find out why my son doesn't have coverage.
AHCCCS: Let me transfer you to your eligibility specialist, Nicole...
[of course the number doesn't work. Third call to them for the day is a little different...]
Me: I'd like to find out why my son wasn't approved for health insurance coverage. He doesn't have coverage with Medicaid even though he is supposed to. I've already tried calling my eligibility specialist but she never answers her phone. I've already tried contacting her supervisor but I get his answering machine and he doesn't call back.
AHCCCS: Let me look up your account and see if I could help... [pause] he was disapproved for coverage because he's eligible for Medicaid, but he doesn't have that either. Let me make a note in your account and flag it to say that he needs coverage.
Me: Thank you. I also have to change my income. Can you help me with that too?
AHCCCS: Oh, just fax your letter to xxx-xxx-xxxx.
Me: Thank you!

Wednesday
Nicole calls. I guess they were changing her phone system over. They're supposed to add coverage for my son and reflect my income changes.

We get a letter 4 days later saying that he has been added and our income change has been noted.

So my question is... if they already knew who we were, why did it take a month and a half to review our paperwork in the first place? Especially when they can add my son and change the income amount in less than a week?

Unfortunately, the story doesn't end there. Our first day that we're supposedly eligible for coverage is today, September 1st. So I take my dd to urgent care to have her ears looked at since she's had an ear infection for well over a month now. We have been counting down the days until this day. We show up in the morning, wait around for an hour... and are told that our insurance card is not active.

Oh yes, I'm doing some (nice) yelling on Tuesday. This is ridiculous.

Illegal Immigrants Are Leaving Arizona

An article in this previous Sunday's Arizona Republic talks about how the illegal immigrants in this state are beginning to leave Arizona, in anticipation of the crackdown on businesses that hire illegals that goes into effect on January 1st.

Although the law doesn't go into effect until January 1st, many small items of business have to be taken care of between now and then, which is why people are leaving now rather than waiting. Businesses are not supposed to knowingly employ illegal immigrants after this date, which means that if they know someone is here illegally, they have to let them go prior to that date. The immigrants themselves know that their jobs may be in jeopardy, so they are getting ready to leave now. Especially if they happen to own housing... the time to get the house on the market is now. It's not the best time to be selling because of the current housing slump, but the alternative of foreclosure is probably worse.

The article seems to have a somewhat pessimistic, the sky is falling attitude. Did anybody say that the short term consequences of this law were going to be easy? No. Sure some things are going to be tough. It's likely that there will be vacancies in the job market. All the immigrants leaving will also make the current housing slump a little worse. This is short term loss for a long outlook of gain.

The article almost makes me wonder why don't we let them stay? But then I started to ponder why they should go... and how if they were here legally things would be much different.

• If all these people were here legally, we would know who was here. Seems like a no-brainer. We want to know who is here because of the big terrorism question. While the majority of our illegal immigrants are from Mexico and they're not a big terrorism threat, if Mexicans can sneak in the border, that means someone of any nationality that can get into Mexico, including terrorists from the Middle East, can get here.
  
• If these people were here legally, they wouldn't be suppressing the wages of ordinary Americans. People always make the excuse that illegal immigrants are here "doing the jobs that Americans won't do" but that's not true. They do many jobs that Americans don't want to do under the working conditions that are imposed upon them. Many of these jobs are unsafe, unsanitary, or don't pay a decent wage. The employers know that they can get away with subjecting these employees to those working conditions, because illegals have nowhere to turn to complain. If they were here legally, that would change out of necessity.
  
• They would pay the correct taxes if they were here legally. My husband used to work in a human resource company that did the payroll for many small companies, including many that hired illegals. While it is true that anybody that was employed and didn't work under the table had taxes taken out of their paychecks, the illegal immigrants would often claim a very high number of dependents so that very little money would be taken out.
  

If we need more workers here in this country, we need to increase the quotas and get more people here legally. If our country increases its quota of immigrants, then we can more evenly dole out the work visas to the people applying for them. Right now, if you are from Russia or Italy or Greece or Zimbabwe and want to come to this country, you get in line with all the other people applying to be given permission to live and work in this country, and you wait. If there were fewer people coming into this country illegally, we could allow more of these people that are waiting to come. Our country could choose the best candidates for work Visas, rather than have people barging in that may not be the best match for the job skills that we need.

Since Arizona is going to see some depopulation in the next few months, at least among the immigrant community, there will be some adjustments that need to be made, and some difficulties. But as the law of supply and demand work, eventually the market will work itself out.

Some advantages that we will see include less crowded schools, less crowded emergency rooms, and to some degree, less of a burden on social services. I do realize that illegal immigrants are not allowed to receive social services (as many realized this fall when they tried to return to the University system and realized that they were not eligible for in-state tuition), but many have children that are American citizens and can receive these services. While the government never likes to reduce taxes, with fewer people attending the schools, it might mean that it takes longer for the schools to ask for a new bond to build new buildings.

So while there might be some rough times in store for Arizonans, in the end it will be okay. Probably better even, IMO.

ID Theft Expected To Increase Because of New Law

Arizona passed a new law recently that should make most of us jump for joy. In order to get hired for a new job, employers have to search for your social security number in a federal database, and it has to match up with your name. This will probably have the effect of having fewer illegal immigrants get jobs, because right now it's quite easy to come up with fraudulent documents. This law goes into effect on January 1st.

That's the good news. However, the unintended consequence of this new law is that there may be more incidences of identity theft as a result of this law. People that want to work either have to do one of several things: work in another state, work under the table, or steal someone's identity. Working under the table will probably happen less often, because the penalty for hiring someone this way is quite stiff. They could lose their business license on the second offense.

So if you live in Arizona, make sure that you check your credit regularly. The AZ Republic, which had an article about identity theft in Sunday's newspaper, had a really good suggestion that I had never though of: instead of getting all three free credit reports at once, get your credit reports at different times of the year, and stagger them. That way you have less time between the times you check it. Don't forget to check your children's credit reports as well. My children have fairly unusual names so it's not as likely that people will want to use them, but you never can be too careful. Since this whole ID theft thing became common, I decided to check theirs at the same time I check mine and dh's.

One last thing I feel I should add: if you do have your identity stolen, you can clear it up. You don't need to hire anybody to do it for you, you can do it yourself. Some companies offer identity theft insurance... it isn't necessary, but whether you get it or not depends on you. Could you be organized enough to send out letters and follow through on them? Would you be willing to spend the time to write letters to creditors to clear up your identity? A few years ago, I did some work to repair my credit. There were some items that didn't belong on my credit report, some addresses on there where I had never lived, etc. I was able to get all the questionable items off my credit report, and so could you. I did have to send off a few Certified, Return Receipt Requested envelopes, which cost a little money, but not as much as it would cost me to pay for identity theft insurance for any meaningful time period. It took a little organization: I kept a portfolio with all my credit correspondence in it, I kept photocopies of all the letters I sent and all of my return receipt stubs. I followed up on people that did not respond. It wasn't that hard. If you need more information about clearing up credit for any reason, I recommend that you visit Creditmania.com. It is a very helpful resource, with sample letters and people that are willing to help answer your questions.

All Day Kindergarten

The Arizona Republic reported that nearly every school in Arizona is offering free all-day kindergarten. For the most part, the article seemed quite positive. However, I tend to be against all day kindergarten. I think that it is a bad thing for our state.

For most of the article, the AZ Republic went on and on about how 1/2 day kindergarten did not allow time for children to learn things like reading, etc. How 1/2 day kindergarten was mostly just play time, blah blah blah. But then halfway through the article, I found this little quote:

a recent Rand Corp. study said the nearly 8,000 students enrolled in all-day classes did not score higher in either math or reading when they were in fifth grade compared with students who had not gone to all-day kindergarten.

The education of a child is a long-term process. So if the long term results make no difference, then why do my tax dollars have to pay for it? While it is likely that all day kindergarteners will have better reading skills in first grade, it evens out in the end. So why do we have it? Why do we have to pay for it?

I'm guessing that the hidden agenda behind all of this is that parents don't want to pay for half day day care, when they can pay for before and after school care instead. I worked in a day care, and I know that there is a significant cost difference. Hey, if you can get someone else to pay for your kids day care, it's a great deal, right! It costs taxpayers about $8000 per student to send them to public school, as opposed to $7040 to send them to Kindercare full time for 40 weeks at $176 a week. Never mind that many Kindercares have accredited Kindergartens in them, and include breakfast, lunch, and snacks... let's pay more to send them to public school instead.

Parents still can send their kids to half-day kindergarten... for now. But I'm guessing that that option is likely to go away in the future. The AZ Republic points out all the benefits of all day kindergarten:

• Students get more personal attention from their teacher. And less personal attention with mommy at home.
  
• They can practice writing more. Which I guess is something they can't do at home with mom?
  
• They will develop better social skills. Myth. Children do not need to spend all day out of the home with other children of the same age to develop social skills. How often do you go to work and only work with people of your same age? While it probably helps to get the kids out of the house regularly so they can meet people and make friends, it needn't happen in an all day school setting. 1/2 days work just as well. Besides, after working at Kindercare for 2 years and watching children move from the 2 year old room to the 4 year old room... the children that were shy at 2... are the same children that are shy at age 4. Same goes with the outgoing, popular kids.
  
• Teachers can integrate instruction for all subjects And they can't do that in 1/2 a day? I spent 2 hours or less every day teaching my 4 year old, and I would often integrate her classes. It's just a matter of planning and using curriculum that works well together.
  
• Children can make better use of school resources, such as libraries and art rooms. Nevermind that many schools had to cut art out of the curriculum because of the lack of money. I'm guessing that some of the libraries might not be so hot either.
  

I suppose with all-day kindergarten they will have more time to teach classes like sex ed, read stories like Heather Has Two Mommies, Daddy's Roommate, or King and King. And they will have more time to read the children stories about dinosaurs that begin something like "Billions of years ago, dinosaurs roamed the earth." Evolution fairy tales begin at the preschool level, I'm afraid.

My daughter is 5. And no, she will not be going to all-day kindergarten. I will be sending her 1/2 days to (my last name) Christian Academy, where she will learn Bible, music, math, reading, history and science, all in less than 3 hours a day. Can she learn that much in only 1/2 days? Yes she can! Today my daughter read the writing on her baby brother's shirt, "zoo pals." Something she learned at the lastname Christian Academy last year. And we only have lessons 4 days a week, allowing us to have park day and field trips every Friday. I'm planning one field trip prior to the start of school... I hope to arrange for her and my nephew to visit the fire station prior to a lesson that I will be teaching on firemen.

Thank You Janet

Normally, I'm not a very big fan of Janet Napolitano. I have to say, however, that this week I'm pretty happy with her. So I take back a couple things that I've said ;-).

Janet Napolitano signed a very tough law that will deal very harshly with businesses that hire illegal aliens. Those who knowingly or intentionally hire illegal aliens will have their business license suspended for the first offense, and will be put on probation for a period of time. If they knowingly or intentionally hire illegal immigrants during their probationary period, they will have their business license revoked for good.

To that I say, bravo!

We have a system that will check social security numbers with a federal database, but many companies, up until now, do not use it. In a prior job, my husband worked with the payrolls of several companies, many of which hired illegal immigrants. He would often run into cases where people had invalid social security numbers or with people who had stolen SSNs from other people.

A law like this is going to have very broad implications:

- It will probably be a good idea to check SSNs for everyone in the family, including children, on a yearly basis. You can get free credit reports at Annual Credit Report.com. It's about time for me and my husband to check our credit reports, and I plan on getting one for my 5 year old and 7 1/2 month old as well. You never know these days. I suppose that with this new law coming online, it will be even more important.

- It will discourage illegal immigrants from coming to this state, and perhaps get some of them to leave. This will of course, create another ripple effect in our state, affecting schools, health care, labor, and law enforcement.

- It will also affect the economy in different ways. A few years ago, I was looking for an evening job so I could stay at home with my daughter and work while my husband was at home to care for her. I went to apply at several places, but Taco Bell, Wal Mart, Burger King, McDonald's, the movie theater, etc. was just not interested in hiring me. Could that have been related to illegal immigration? Perhaps. But if you dry up the supply of illegal immigrants, you also deplete, to some degree, people that are going to work in these places. Which may mean raising wages, which in turn may raise prices to some degree. However, we will end up saving money in the areas of education, health care, and law enforcement. I think that it may take some time to balance all of this out, but I think that it eventually will balance out. And if the wages of construction workers goes up... at least that may become a viable career again. I think that construction wages have been artificially depressed because of the supply of cheap illegal labor.

- Some businesses may leave the state. If they do, then they probably were involved in hiring illegal immigrants in the first place, and I'd have to question how much overall good they were doing to our state in the first place.

I know that many illegal immigrants are over here just trying to make money. However, for every person who came over here illegally, there is someone in Nigeria, India, or even Mexico waiting to be let into this country legally. Some businesses argue that without illegal immigration, we would not have enough workers in this country. Perhaps that is true. But if we don't have enough legal immigrants coming into this country, wouldn't the best solution to be to increase the quotas for legal immigrants coming into this country, rather than turn our heads and look away when people sneakily (or sometimes boldly) disobey the laws of our country by coming over here uninvited?

Hopefully this law will go into effect. I do realize that there are some problems that need to be fixed, such as not allowing vital services like hospitals to be closed down and whole chains being closed down due to one franchise's transgression, but at least we have something to work with. I think I'll send the governor a thank-you note.

The law goes into effect January 1st.