Just got a letter that is a cause of huge relief for my family(healthcare related)...

Starting in February, my fiancee is going to covered by Medicare.

Just some background, we live in Missouri, which does NOT have medicaid expansion, so if me and my fiancee get married next year, she would have lost her medicaid coverage. The Medicare coverage, from what we can tell, is based solely on the fact that she is on disability, my income doesn't enter into it, with no income limit, that means she's now free to marry me. We still have some questions about copays and such, along with overall coverage, but from what I can tell, we can get full coverage for 100 dollars or so a month for her. Granted that still almost 10% of her income, but its a hell of a lot better than a monthly, 330 dollar spend down for Missouri Medicaid. Its also going to be automatically deducted from her SSI, so we never have to worry about missing a payment. We have had issues with the spend down for Medicaid not going through in a timely manner, and costing us a shitload of money.

Next week she is going to her primary doctor to ask some questions about Medicare coverage, we are also going to check more into this.

She gets Part A automatically starting in February, Part B will cost about 100 dollars a month, Prescription coverage we may be able to get at no additional premium charge, with anywhere from 2 to 6 dollar copay. The medicare website does allow us to input her medications and dosages of medications she is currently on, and cost, without insurance the costs are over 18,000 dollars a year, with Medicare plus Prescription, it would be reduced to 290 dollars a year. This only represents about half her medications, by the way, her other half are provided by a local healthcare provider at no cost, but they only do that for certain medications.

I mean, even with the bullshit, outsourced, third party companies Medicare goes through, this seems far and away the best option for us at this time, but what I really wish is that everyone could take advantage of this.