[Sunshinemom]

Once again looking for advice from those of you who have already adopted through Foster Care. Our son currently has Medi Cal through the state of California. When he was placed with us as an adoptive placement we were given the option to put him on our insurance at that time. We chose to continue with Medi Cal, knowing when the adoption is finalized we can put him on my husbands insurance at that time. I'm wondering what any of you in my position did? Once he's adopted we don't have to put him on our insurance though, we can keep MediCal until he's 18. If we continue he will stay with his current Pediatric group (which is a great group), since the pediatrician my son's have gone to for nearly 10 years doesnt' take MediCal. When he was placed with us it was in the winter and between his Asthma and ear infections, the amount of medication he was on was a bit overwhelming at the time and would have been expensive.

I don't want him to feel "different" than his brothers and I know if he asks why he doesn't go to their Dr. when he's older I'll let him know we kept him with the Dr's he'd always been with. We can afford to pay the copay on his medications, I don't want this to be a purely financial reason, so I'm looking for some reasons why I should make the decision one way or the other. Currently we have GREAT healthcare coverage...it's a PPO and we pay nothing out of pocket other than copays, but who knows if this will always be the insurance we have.

I'm sure there are issues I haven't even thought of. He doesn't have many health concerns....mild asthma, some vision problems, speech delay...nothing major.

Any advice one way or the other?

[msgypsylee]

If you can keep him on MediCal and add him to your insurance too you should. Usually your private insurance will pick up whatever your state insurance won't.

[Vitality08]

I would keep him on Medi Cal and the private insurance. One will be secondary so if there is a proceedure that one won't cover, the other will. Also, the secondary (private) insurance will cover portions of proceedures the medi cal won't. I think it's win win plus I know for a lot of insurances the cost of "family" insurance is no different if you have 4 members or 6 or what have you. I know mine would be the same if I had 2 kids or 5 kids.

[Mkuhlmann06]

We are being placed with a preadoptive placement 7/27. My insurance will cover him from date of placement. We are also keeping his Medicaid card. My insurance will be primary, with his secondary. If I take him to a place that accepts both, any copays as a result of the primary will be submitted to the secondary (so hopefully no out of pocket expenses at all). If I take him to a place that doesn't accept primary but accepts medicaid, the place will submit to primary to be turned down and then submit to medicaid to be paid. My hope is that the medicaid will cover the copays for DR visits, therapy visits and medication...so we aren't laying so much out.

My advice is to have both coverages as soon as you can. My primary only allows a certain number of mental/behaviorial visits a year...so if we need to exceed that, we plan on letting the primary insurance bounce the additional visits and submit those to the Medicaid.

Good luck...and congrats on your placement.

[sundara]

I agree with all of the above. I have 4 kids adopted from FCare, and our insurance is primary w/medicaid secondary.

It is hugely important to keep both if at all possible, especially since you cannot predict what will happen between now & the age of 18, especially hospitalizations.

In our case, while our kids came in presenting with very few issues from their background, the teen years hit 3 years after the adoption & many issues have arisen due to things that had happened to them that they are only now grappling with, resulting in medicaid saving us from more than 20K in hospital bills, and we think more may be in store.

[Sunshinemom]

Thanks for your advice. I know I'll always get great advice from this board. I never knew that I could keep MediCal as a secondary insurance. Imagine that...my adoption worker never let me know about that. He's coming out next week so I'll be sure to look into it with him.

Thanks!

[JC10]

ABSOLUTELY! It's guaranteed insurance until your child is an adult. Nothing is ever a guarantee on health and private insurance is not guaranteed to last forever.

[chelspark1]

We live in NJ and are adopting two siblings (13 and 14) from NY. They were covered under our insurance when they were placed with us and we just applied for NJ Medicaid for one of them (he is SSI) and the other has NY Medicaid. We were told that they did NOT qualify for Medicaid after the adoption was finalized. We were given some song and dance about behavior health coverage under Medicaid if they needed it but this doesn't sound right. We thought they would keep their Medicaid since they are considered a special needs group due to their age and the fact that they are siblings. Both will definately need braces and one already wears glasses. But you just don't know what may come up in the future. Anyone have any experience with this?

[Mkuhlmann06]

I don't have any answers for you chelspark1. I do know the medicaid insurance is written in our adoption subsidy agreement that we and the county signed. Also, the county where we are adopting from initiated the name change on the card and the insurance coverage due to a change in county. Hopefully someone else on here would know more to help you, b/c my only suggestion is to check your adoption agreement. You could ask for the agreement to be reevaluated and increased.

[chelspark1]

I will check our adoption agreement but I'm pretty sure it isn't in there. They actually did the agreement with us the day we picked the kids up to bring them home. It was a very crazy day - we had rented a minivan - drove four hours and after reaching the last foster home to pick them up we realized there was no way we were fitting all their stuff in the van (we were told they had very few things). It was crazy and the sw pull out paperwork for us to sign in the middle of this craziness. Of course, we weren't told about this beforehand and my mind was on other things at the time. Would have been nice to have this explained to us beforehand.
Just trying to get all the info I can before we finalize. At this point I'm thinking of hiring an attorney because I'm really getting no answers from the caseworkers and want to cover ourselves.