Who has health insurance? Advice needed please.

[coffeelover]

edit2--I modified the title in the hopes of getting people to view/respond to this thread.

If you have employer based, state based, or even the new sbusidized health care I would like your thoughts and/or advice.

A while back there was a post where someone stated they make sure they contribute enough to their 401k to make sure their MAGI is below the threshold needed to get state medicaid. Either for them or their kids, not sure on this one.

So this post got me thinking about our health insurance.

We have insurance thru husbands employer, 7 people are covered under him. 2 of which are not claimed on our taxes because his ex-wife is allowed to claim them every year due to wording in divorce decree.

I'm trying to figure out if we qualify based on income for this year. I think we do....
It looks like for our state our MAGI will have to be 58k for 7 people or for 5 people it should be below 45k (this is for kids only medicaid)
https://c.ymcdn.com/sites/www.mpca.net/resource/resmgr/Outreach_and_Enrollment_Toolkit/2015_Michigan_MAGI_Eligibili.pdf

Does anyone know how this works if you can't claim kids on your taxes but you are legally (per divorce decree) obligated to keep insurance on the kids that are claimed under mothers taxes?

We would still keep my husbands insurance through his employer on everyone

I would like to file our taxes for this year in a month or so. Then apply for medicaid for the kids once taxes are accepted.
 (2 out of 5 of the kids have substantial health issue) So getting medicaid for them would help out so much.

I'm just not sure the right way to go in this situation.

I don't think my husband and I would qualify for the health insurance.

 I'm not so worried about us anyways, getting it for the kids as a secondary insurance would be the awesome part, and it would save us a ton of money each month.

Advice, help. We are in Michigan.

edit: we may not qualify if the MAGI number we have to meet is the one for 5 people. I don't think I made that very clear in my post.

[MDM]

It appears (see https://www.healthcare.gov/income-and-household-information/household-size/) that "household size" follows the rules for number of dependents for tax purposes.

You could try one of the contacts listed at the bottom right of that web page to see if they can give you a more favorable interpretation - good luck!

[Landlord2015]

I don't have health insurance, but I live in Finland(Europe) with different system.

The way it works in Finland that you have four options regarding healthcare:
A. You have an employer that covers your health costs i.e they have outsourced that service to a private clinic.  You can not get anything for free there though for example a vaccine only for holiday purposes is not free.
B. The government hospitals. They have reasonable fees. The first time you do pay a fee for that whole year when you visit a doctor. Other visits will not cost you unless some expensive special treatment or investigation then perhaps I am not sure. The medicine will of course not be free.
C. Private hospitals without any employer that covers for cost.
D. You can have health insurance in Finland also but it is usually related to mortgage. You can take an insurance that if you get seriously sick i.e cancer for exampel and can not work anymore then you will be economically ok even with your mortgage payments. That insurance is however very expensive and not a cheap insurance.

I use A and B depending on my employer and right now B, but when it comes to dental i.e teeth then I use C only. The employers usually never cover dental costs anyway in my country.

I do like sports and healthy food, sleep enough and I also eat "youth pillers" Carnosine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carnosine
which extends life somewhat, but nothing stops aging completely.

Landlording is ocassionally stressful, but I work partime usually 4 days(or evenings depending on what I agree with employer)/week and I do take holidays. I don't have a full time job contract.

[sstants]

Hi Coffeelover

You're asking a pretty complicated question, and American health insurance is such a mess that no wonder you are confused.

I'd like to check one of your assumptions first...The subsidy will be based on your concurrent year's income. Are you confident that your income is going to stay the same next year?

[coffeelover]

Hi Coffeelover

You're asking a pretty complicated question, and American health insurance is such a mess that no wonder you are confused.

I'd like to check one of your assumptions first...The subsidy will be based on your concurrent year's income. Are you confident that your income is going to stay the same next year?

Yes it is complicated, so very complicated.

 I do believe our income will stay the same next year, I think it may actually be less because I do not think a bonus is going to happen.

The complicated part is that due to a divorce husband has to keep ins on 2 kids that he is not allowed to claim via taxes.

 If we could have medicaid that would come into play for the things that are not covered, that is what we want. 2 out of the 5 dependents have substantial medical bills. Even if medicaid didn't cover their normal doctor visits, if it covered the urgent care and er visits that would be awesome. These urgent care and er visits tend to happen at least 4 times a year for these 2 kids. One is very prone to injuries, argh, breaking ankles, falling, passing out.

 They both get sick a lot, boils, ear infections, one was diagnosed with MRSA 2 years ago and gets reoccurring infections from that. These  always happen over the weekend or late at night so a trip to the urgent care is needed.

I think I'm going to apply once we do our taxes and just see if we can get approval or not. We will still keep the employers ins on the kids.

[Jack]

The complicated part is that due to a divorce husband has to keep ins on 2 kids that he is not allowed to claim via taxes.

Did this divorce agreement happen before Obamacare? If so, I wonder if it could be modified because it no longer makes sense in the context of current law.

[coffeelover]

The complicated part is that due to a divorce husband has to keep ins on 2 kids that he is not allowed to claim via taxes.

Did this divorce agreement happen before Obamacare? If so, I wonder if it could be modified because it no longer makes sense in the context of current law.

Yes it was put into place 10 years ago. My husband WILL NOT go back to court to modify anything. So this is a mute point unfortunately.

He feels he should keep insurance on the kids, which I am completely fine with. It is a family coverage and even covers my adult child as well.
We just need help with the bills that aren't covered by the insurance that this past year added up to almost 6k.

These bills are affecting our monthly budget and how we are saving for an emergency fund.

edit- I can't believe I typed mute instead of moot. Believe me I understand the difference, smh at myself.

[Jack]

My husband WILL NOT go back to court to modify anything.

...

These bills are affecting our monthly budget and how we are saving for an emergency fund.

Okay, but just realize you and your husband are making a choice, and be sure you're willing to accept those consequences.

edit- I can't believe I typed mute instead of moot. Believe me I understand the difference, smh at myself.

LOL. I can't believe you edited the post to point out the typo, but didn't actually fix it. ; )