Massachusetts residents with questions about medications or difficulty paying for them can get help.
"Outreach & enrollment" means much more than putting up posters and helping people fill out MassHealth applications. Recently, over the course of a two hour appointment, my supervisor and I counseled one household on eleven different public health insurance, subsidy and care programs. We helped them file four separate applications to five different insurance programs, putting together a patchwork of care options to cover the hole left by the loss of employer-sponsored insurance.
The Qualifying Student Health Insurance Program (QSHIP) was set up to assist all individuals studying at colleges and universities in Massachusetts. However, with the creation of Health Care Reform, we are beginning to see more issues with these plans than before. For some students, the QSHIP programs create barriers that make it harder to access the care they need.
A one-page summary sheet describes what QSHIP covers, what limits exist and how it works with other state health programs.
Some MassHealth and CMSP members are losing benefits.
Households with elders or disabled members see the greatest benefit.
MassHealth will not count federal economic stimulus rebates as income, but can consider them assets after an exemption period.
This winter, about 100,000 households in the Commonwealth were protected from losing their heat, electricity and other utilities by the state utility shut-off protection laws, which prevents shut-off for households whose circumstances meet certain conditions. This protection ended on May 1, and people have begun getting shut-off notices. These notices are bad news, but CAN be used to request a MassHealth premium waiver or Commonwealth Care premium waiver.
MLRI offers a daylong workshop about state benefits and how to secure them.
During the recent round of MassHealth Training Forum meetings, we were informed that commercial fishermen who are eligible for the Fishing Partnership Health Plan are not eligible for Commonwealth Care, because they are eligible for another state-subsidized health plan. The non-profit FPHP is a fine program offering a great benefit package through Harvard Pilgrim. The premium subsidy of approximately 50% is funded by a combination of federal, state and private benefactor dollars. This is a great option for many fishermen.
