Column: Waking up to Welfare

by Lucinda Ulrich

Daily Lobo columnist

For the majority of my life, I assumed that people on Medicaid and other social welfare programs just lay around all day making up fictitious children and eating taxpayer bonbons.

But since life is what happens while you're making other plans, I ended up pregnant. My high-paying California job was coming to an end, and even though I was making the highest salary of my life, I had not been able to make ends meet feeding my own mouth. I knew it would be impossible with two.

So, at 35 years old, I made the decision any independent-minded, self-respecting adult would make, and I moved back in with mom. As if that wasn't bad enough, I looked for a job for three months, but I couldn't get so much as an interview. Many of the positions I applied for required psychological tests and credit checks.

To this day, I don't understand the purpose of an honesty test. The administrator tells me to answer honestly, but it's incredibly easy to tell which answers they want to hear. But it's an honesty test, right? So I respond honestly, and of course I don't get the job. Turns out you have to lie on an honesty test to pass it.

Without a job, I swallowed my pride and shuffled into the local Medicaid office. Luckily, it turned out to be a benefit not to be employed, since merely negotiating the Medicaid maze is a full-time job.

In my time in the Medicaid waiting room, I met folks from every walk of life: veterans wearing their ratty army coats, housewives in fuzzy animal slippers, teenage mothers running after their toddlers, elderly men and women so drunk you could smell the alcohol emanating from their pores, and a woman who told me she was bipolar while she knitted in one of the hard gray chairs.

Initially, they put me on pregnancy-only Medicaid that covered only medical care related to pregnancy. If I broke my leg or contracted cholera, I would not be covered. I managed to get through a long, hot summer unscathed, and finally gave birth to my daughter via C-section, sans bill.

Then, without asking, Medicaid put me on Family Planning Medicaid. They seemed more concerned with preventing another pregnancy than with whether I could eat or pay rent. After a long recovery, I got it together and went back to the Medicaid office to apply for full Medicaid, which covers everything from root canals to eye exams. I filled out my application - which was as difficult and mysterious as a tax form written by a corporate lawyer - and submitted it.

I got word during Christmas that an appointment had been made for me when I was out of town. I spent an hour on the phone - long-distance - explaining that I wouldn't be able to make it. I was summarily rewarded when, because I didn't show up, I only lost my food stamps. In order to get the food stamps back, I had to make another appointment and be interviewed by my caseworker.

Well, I made it to my appointment, but my caseworker didn't. Someone else met me at the iron door, copied all my paperwork, and told me my caseworker would be contacting me soon.

A month later, when I finally caught up with her, she conducted a phone interview and said she would put my file in the to-be-processed stack. I waited a while longer and when nothing happened, I decided to go down in person.

My caseworker must have flipped out under the incredible pressure of denying food to single mothers while approving Viagra coverage for any less-than-rigid elderly man, because she quit and never processed my claim. I was informed I would have to resubmit my application, because in the three months since my food stamps had been dropped, I clearly should have taken the responsibility to contact a supervisor.

While waiting for a handout from the government, I should be assertive enough to contact a supervisor when my caseworker doesn't pull through? Why not? What do I know? I'm new at this.

What I did understand at that moment was the reason why a security guard always checks my bags for weapons at the door.

Maybe I should dress up in my rattiest clothes, grab a couple of Thrift Town bags, and, screaming, baby in tow, camp out in the lobby of the local Medicaid office. I could let my baby cry at the top of her lungs while I moan over and over, "I am so hungry, I am so hungry."

I have a minor in theater, after all, but I still have to maintain a small part of my dignity. Or do I?