We’re the Government but You Poors Can Just Refer to Us As a Helping Hand
By: @thesaltyju
Dates of Rejection: 4/1/2021- 4/6/202
Welcome to the United States! Land of the free, home of the brave. Unless, of course, you’re *shudders slightly, spoken in hushed tone* poor. If you find yourself falling into that godforsaken economic category because you are unemployed due to a global pandemic, it is your liberty to file for unemployment benefits. Easy there, tiger, those benefits aren’t just granted to you. You’ll have to file for it online where INEVITABLY our application process will tell you to give us a call to finish up. Oops, what’s that sound? Oh, that’s just the sound of silence as we drop the call unexpectedly after you’ve answered several prompts including typing in your social security number. Not our fault, buddy, there’s about 600 other people trying to get us on the horn at any given time. Once you’re on our payroll after calling us at thirty minute intervals for weeks straight before getting through to someone, we have the right to cut you from our benefits at a moment’s notice. We do this because we’re not really sure what we’re doing. LOLZ. There should be a segment in US Weekly called “The Government, They’re Just Like Us,” amirite?! Anyway, sometimes we’re waiting for a bill to be passed to keep your funds coming, sometimes we’ve decided that your eligibility has ended even though you still haven’t gotten a job and you are desperately trying to, sometimes we’re just not paying attention and make a mistake. We’ve all been hungover at work before, so you understand.
But hey, don’t stop there! We’ve got more! You want health insurance? We’ve got free coverage and we’re not afraid to advertise about it and then make it incredibly difficult for you to find it. It’s by state, really. And every state has different rules. You could try to find out what those rules are, but that’s classified info. Instead, why don’t you spend several hours circling the healthcare marketplace website only to realize it’s not intuitive and you’ll need to call. We do that on purpose. We just want to hear your frustrated voice when we tell you that you’ll have to fill out our application on the website and there’s really nothing we can do for you on the phone. But then, uh oh, you’ve filled out the application and we tell you that your income isn’t processing and you’ll have to give us a call to confirm. I know, it SEEMS silly because your income is ALSO from us, but that’s a whole different office. They’re down the hall and we’d have to look up your name on our database. Who has time for that? It’d really be much easier if you did the heavy lifting for us. Oh good, we’ve received your payment history from the same exact state gov login you’re using to now apply for health insurance. Got it. Except one TINY little thing. It looks like you still have health insurance on your record from 2015. While we understand you’ve had 4 other health insurance providers since then, this one really seems to have stuck around and we’re gonna need you to call them directly and get a letter proving you’re not still covered by them. Once you get that letter, you’re gonna wanna call us again to make sure we’ve seen it. After we’ve seen it, we’re gonna need about 3-5 days to process it. And then AFTER that, you can go ahead and pick your insurance plan. That insurance plan of course won’t start for a full month after you’ve finished playing phone tag with us. Wasn’t that fun?!
Now you’re covered! Congrats—we won’t have to fine you for NOT having health coverage now. But a word to the wise, don’t even try calling doctors to see if they’ll accept your new insurance. They’re down with CDPHP, no problemo, but you so much as mention Medicaid and they’ll hang up so fast you’ll think you somehow transmitted your poorness through the phone. They can’t have your poor people problems stinking up their waiting room, spreading your propaganda of free healthcare to the paying customers. It turns out, doctors hate us. We demand a buttload of information from them and create a lot of red tape. Which is SO UNLIKE us. We’re just here to help YOU! Ya know?
Oh and one more thing, is your heat bill too high? We gotchu, boo. Only if you want to spend several weeks calling your state energy research department asking for an application, calling back a month later when said application was never received, leaving a message because call volume is high, never hearing back, then two months later finally receiving the application and realizing that it’s asking for all of your bank info and a human sacrifice just to get someone to come to your dwelling and audit your energy usage. What’s that? This process took so long that winter’s over and you don’t even need aid with your heat bill anymore? See, told ya we’d help! That’s why we exist. To support those struggling financially. But don’t get too close to us, we can’t have anyone knowing we’re associated with you poors.