Insurance

Insurance.....so frustrating.


When we adopted Joselin it was easy, we put her on our insurance, Tricare Prime.  When we adopted our kids from foster care they came with Medicaid.  We also put them on our insurance.  It seemed like the right thing to do especially since we sometimes got care for Larissa out of state.


Then comes the complications.


We have a family doctor.  At one time she took the Medicaid that foster children are on.  Life was easy.  Then Medicaid "improved" (got cheaper) and our doctors office no longer accepted the type of Medicaid that foster children are put on. 


At the time it meant that Emma, Michelle and Kassi were sent to another doctor.  We used our primary insurance for Anthony and Larissa at our family doctor and just paid the co-pays since they don't do double billing.


Typically with our foster children we try to take them to their established doctors.  Emma and Michelle came from out of county so that wasn't possible for them.  Kassi did not have a local doctor.


After we adopted the kids we tried to get them moved through our insurance to our established family doctor.  Tricare kept kicking them to Fort Jackson which is not close to us.  So they were with Medicaid at a local doctor and Tricare at Fort Jackson.  We tried several times.  Finally we were able to get them back to the doctor that Medicaid had picked for them. 


I would have preferred to have everyone at the same doctor but just decided to deal with it.  We have three different doctors at this time since our foster son goes to another doctors office.


I was doing OK with this until I needed to get Larissa an eye exam.  Tricare is the primary insurance and only allows one eye exam every two years.  Medicaid pays for one every year.  I was not able to get any eye exam place willing to bill because Tricare is the primary.  It didn't matter to them that Medicaid authorized an annual exam.  Tricare didn't.  So frustrating.  Finally we took her to Shaw AFB where she will go annually.  Shaw AFB is not local for us.


We thought that having the extra insurance we were making sure that the kids were well covered.  It seemed as though we were actually causing harm.


We were handling the different doctors until the day I decided to get the girls an appointment to get their ADHD medications before school started.  I called a month early.  I couldn't get them in until after school started.  Crazy.  I had issues before when they were sick getting them in quickly but wasn't expecting a 5 week wait for an appointment.  We decided to dump the Medicaid doctor and request transfer to Fort Jackson. It will be a drive but it doesn't take a month to get seen.  I am not sure if the girls will start their school year with their medications or not, transferring takes time.


So now Medicaid was working against us by sending them to a doctor who is so overwhelmed it takes longer than a month to get seen.  Sometimes Tricare is the issue and sometimes Medicaid is. 


So now we have kids locally with our family doctor, foster son locally with another doctor, and at Fort Jackson.  Frustrating.


To my foster adoptive families, do you get Medicaid in your state and do you put your kids on your own insurance once you adopt?