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Hi, I'm Michelle Begin, and I'm a licensed social worker, I work for Maine General Medical
Center, and I would love to tell you all about Consumers for Affordable Health Care.
It's a wonderful resource for anyone who is looking into qualifying or even sometimes
purchasing insurance, you can ask a lot of questions, it's free and it's confidential,
and they will advocate for you if you do need help in understanding what the rules are around
any program, in particular MaineCare. And again, it's just so easy to call, they will
call you back, and they're very respectful of every person I've ever talked to them about,
they're non-judgmental and, it's just a wonderful organization.
A lot of the time when I, I know the basic rules of MaineCare, but when it comes to so many of our families
are, I would like to say unique and blended, that's when I really need someone else to
look at it because, if someone comes with their children and they marry someone with
children, and then sometimes people do get some child support, so the income is just
skimming the top of what they might qualify for, would be really important for some of
them to make sure there isn't anything missing, and there have been times where families have
qualified because you can count certain incomes and not others, and, without making it sound
too complicated, but that is how complicated it can become for some of our families and,
otherwise they might just think, "I don't qualify" or they might be told they don't
qualify, when someone sits down and really looks at their case, like at Consumers, they
qualify and it's really great, most of the time my families do qualify for something,
it's really helpful.
So I value that they treat all our, my patients that I work with, very respectfully. And then
the continued training they offer us as social workers, it's very important, because the
laws change a lot, and I am happy that I don't have to learn every piece of those laws, because
I know if I know where to go, then I can let some things go and focus on helping the patient,
because you could spend hours and days and weeks trying to figure out everything that's
going on with MaineCare, so it's very helpful to have that.
One of the com- it wasn't really complex, but it was when a young woman who was underage,
a minor, became pregnant and when she went to apply for MaineCare she was told she didn't
qualify because of her parents' income, so I did call Mary, because I remembered from
a training that she would be considered her own household in that instance, because she was
pregnant, and we were able to qualify her for, we didn't qualify her, but find out
that she did indeed qualify for MaineCare, her parents were prepared that they were going
to have to be paying that all out of pocket, because they didn't have insurance either.
So it was a really wonderful case because she and her newborn then were able to get services,
not worry about it. It was very stressful for the family.
We have patients that, because they, you know, we call Cons - this particular patient, because
he was able to get his MaineCare that he qualified for, and come in and get his healthcare needs
met, he was able to go to work. I mean, this is someone who may not have been able to
go to work otherwise because of some different situations that he needed surgery for. And
it, it really does get much bigger than just, "Oh, do you have MaineCare", it's, and I feel
really good to be able to say to people they're non-profit, they're there for you, or for
the consumer, they do go to the Legislature, they do, you know, try to advocate for everyone,
so we all have an opportunity to have our healthcare needs met.
I think it would be nice if everyone who had an insurance question, whether or not you're
low income or not, because with the new Affordable Healthcare Act, that's huge, I've been giving
that out to a lot of people as a resource to call and ask those questions because, again,
not knowing, people create their own stories, and they might not try to even see if they
qualify for anything, so I just wish people more people knew about it, and that it is
a resource that is free, and anyone can call, and you will get a call back, and that they
are there to help people.
I think Health Care is just so important, if you don't have your general healthcare
needs met, everything is affected, whether or not they apply for jobs, because if they're
not getting medications they're not healthy, and it's just such a basic need of so many
people that is not being met. And when you can help that need be met and see that difference,
I can't even explain it. It's just amazing.