But one thing is truly a saving grace and makes it all worth it: MaineCare is very easy once I find a doctor who accepts it. Unlike the complicated system in New York City, where I had to bring my acceptance letter and fill out pages of paperwork every time I went to a doctor, with MaineCare I just give the doctor’s office my ID number and they find me in a government computer system.
And every year I’ve been re-upped. Why? Because even though, at 32, I make a little more money than I used to, and even though I live with someone else who helps pay the bills, my tax returns still show I make barely enough to live on. Despite the difficulties of signing up, once I’m in I’m all set. MaineCare — as a system — can recognize a person who cannot afford health-insurance premiums. And the people who handle MaineCare claims are sensitive to this. MaineCare staffers are actually better and more willing to listen to a person’s narrative than most customer-service people in private businesses — and they’ve had to work in a complicated system with many Achilles’ heels, so thinking outside the box is not a stretch. I’ve often found that the person filing my claims wants to make it work for me. Now, I’m even allowed to file by mail, with a follow-up phone interview. I often get the same claims person. I know her name and she knows mine. She knows I need the care and I get the sense that she wants to give it to me because she knows I need it.
But what will happen to me after I get married and we are officially a two-income family? Already MaineCare doesn’t cover my birth-control pills (because they are a brand not covered by MaineCare, prescribed, finally, by my old gynecologist in New York) or my therapy. When I started looking into the state-subsidized Dirigo Health semi-private insurance plan or joining my fiancé’s employer’s health insurance, I found that even less would be covered than when I’m on MaineCare.
Trying to navigate the paperwork is turning out to be a full-time job on its own. But what’s clear is that with both Dirigo and the insurance plan my fiancé now belongs to, I’d still have to pay for my therapy, I’d still have to pay for my birth control pill, and not only would I have to pay the monthly premiums, but I’d also have to pay for tests like the yearly vaginal ultrasounds I need (which cost more than $300) or anything beyond a yearly routine gynecological exam. Last time I checked, all women have vaginas, and there are close to 400,000 women over the age of 18 in Maine. This strikes me as if not punitive, certainly restrictive. And with Dirigo, on top of the premiums and everything else, I’d need to pay a yearly “enrollment” fee of $150. At least with MaineCare I get a yearly notice in the mail — just one page — and I fill it out, mail it back to them with all my paperwork, have a phone interview, and after they approve me they pay for what I need when I need it most, at the baseline, no questions asked.
