Where is Change?
During my AOL browse I came across this link to an article..
SILVER SPRINGS — Rudy Friece and his wife, Emily, married within a year of dating. It was a simple civil ceremony at a courthouse in Liberty, Ohio on Rudy's 21st birthday.
Nearly 50 years later, following two children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, the couple divorced, for no other reason than that they couldn't afford the costs of Emily's weekly $2,800 chemotherapy treatments for terminal bone cancer.
After learning from a friend that by dissolving their marriage Emily could qualify for Medicaid, the couple walked into a drugstore, picked up a guidebook on dissolutions and then marched into an Ohio courthouse in February 2005, their $75 divorce petition in hand.
"He (the judge) told us, ‘This was the first. I've never given anyone a dissolution that had been married this long,' " Rudy Friece recalled.
Medicaid, the combined state and federal program that provides health coverage for low-income individuals, sets a limit on the amount of assets a person may have before qualifying for help. The asset limit to qualify for Florida Medicaid's medically needy program is $5,000 for individuals and $6,000 for couples.
It's been easier for a single person to get help under the rules. That is, until recently. Now, as of July 1 of next year, it won't even help to go to this drastic measure because of cuts to the state budget.
The Florida Legislature plans to discontinue Medicaid payments to the medically needy, excluding pregnant women and children, and the elderly and disabled — a group that contains 40,000 individuals — effective July 1, in order to save the state nearly $700 million.
Divorce, if only on paper, was always a last resort, said Friece, a 72-year-old retired truck driver who moved to Silver Springs following his wife's death two years ago. "She would cry about it. She didn't want to do it but I told her, she had no choice. She was getting worse and worse, and finally she agreed to it," he said. "After it was done, it was done. I took care of her up until the very end."
The Frieces are part of a small but growing number of elderly or low-income couples who have felt the need to dissolve their marriage in order to qualify for government-funded health coverage for a sick spouse. An Aug. 13 New York Times article pointed out the regularity with which some couples are jumping into marriage or considering divorce so a partner can benefit from health coverage.
Read more here: http://www.ocala.com/article/20080928/NEWS/809280293/1171/WEATHER?Title=Medical_costs_force_couples_to_divorce
SILVER SPRINGS — Rudy Friece and his wife, Emily, married within a year of dating. It was a simple civil ceremony at a courthouse in Liberty, Ohio on Rudy's 21st birthday.
Nearly 50 years later, following two children, seven grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, the couple divorced, for no other reason than that they couldn't afford the costs of Emily's weekly $2,800 chemotherapy treatments for terminal bone cancer.
After learning from a friend that by dissolving their marriage Emily could qualify for Medicaid, the couple walked into a drugstore, picked up a guidebook on dissolutions and then marched into an Ohio courthouse in February 2005, their $75 divorce petition in hand.
"He (the judge) told us, ‘This was the first. I've never given anyone a dissolution that had been married this long,' " Rudy Friece recalled.
Medicaid, the combined state and federal program that provides health coverage for low-income individuals, sets a limit on the amount of assets a person may have before qualifying for help. The asset limit to qualify for Florida Medicaid's medically needy program is $5,000 for individuals and $6,000 for couples.
It's been easier for a single person to get help under the rules. That is, until recently. Now, as of July 1 of next year, it won't even help to go to this drastic measure because of cuts to the state budget.
The Florida Legislature plans to discontinue Medicaid payments to the medically needy, excluding pregnant women and children, and the elderly and disabled — a group that contains 40,000 individuals — effective July 1, in order to save the state nearly $700 million.
Divorce, if only on paper, was always a last resort, said Friece, a 72-year-old retired truck driver who moved to Silver Springs following his wife's death two years ago. "She would cry about it. She didn't want to do it but I told her, she had no choice. She was getting worse and worse, and finally she agreed to it," he said. "After it was done, it was done. I took care of her up until the very end."
The Frieces are part of a small but growing number of elderly or low-income couples who have felt the need to dissolve their marriage in order to qualify for government-funded health coverage for a sick spouse. An Aug. 13 New York Times article pointed out the regularity with which some couples are jumping into marriage or considering divorce so a partner can benefit from health coverage.
Read more here: http://www.ocala.com/article/20080928/NEWS/809280293/1171/WEATHER?Title=Medical_costs_force_couples_to_divorce
