Needy Minnesotans scramble after state cancels health benefits
The first sentence, in bold, confirmed his fear: "Health Plan Disenrollment Notice."
It was Whitten's first warning -- four days before he would lose his benefits.
"Canceling my health insurance would cause calamity to my life," said Whitten, 58, who takes 25 pills daily for pain relief and to prevent his body from rejecting the transplant.
Whitten appears to have been one of multiple casualties of the state's turbulent conversion for 2015 to a MNsure electronic system for determining eligibility for state-subsidized Medical Assistance or MinnesotaCare programs.
Scrambling to make 180,000 overdue renewal determinations this summer due to glitches in the system, the state pulled in extra staff. Eventually it determined that 40,000 low-income Minnesotans would be dropped from coverage by
But it appears mistakes were made. Whitten lost his coverage despite sending in a form seeking renewal of his benefits in March. He received no notice until late August that his coverage was in jeopardy. Navigator agencies such as Portico Healthnet, which help Minnesotans access health benefits, have received similar calls and visits over the past month from others who believe they should still be covered.
"Clients are coming to us so frustrated," said
A spokeswoman for the
Disenrollment letters to the group of 40,000 starting going out in mid-August, but the explanations of why people were being cut off were vague, said
Complicating the process is that many state workers who would otherwise handle phone lines have been processing applications, she said. So even Portico workers have struggled to call and check on the status of applications they helped people complete.
Adding to the panic for Whitten were his immediate medical needs. While his cancer is in remission -- he was diagnosed with Burkitt lymphoma in
On Wednesday, a human services official called Whitten and apologized for an error that incorrectly terminated his benefits. The resumption of his health coverage was fortuitous, because late Thursday he was hospitalized for pneumonia.
Whitten managed media relations for the Park Nicollet health system until his position was eliminated in the organization's merger with
Due to infection risks while he received his bone marrow transplant at the
He remembers completing an application to renew his HealthPartners Medical Assistance plan, and handing it to a friend to mail on
After being contacted this Wednesday about the case, state officials discovered that Whitten had sent them a MNsure form that determined his eligibility but wasn't the actual application. He said he never received the proper renewal form in the mail.
That is a common refrain among the people coming to Portico because they also lost their coverage this month.
Problems involve both the state Medical Assistance program, which serves people at or near the poverty line, and MinnesotaCare, for those with slightly higher incomes.
"For a lot of people, they had never actually received the renewal paperwork," Lozano said. "While they may have known they needed to renew, they didn't know the way to go about it."
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