By Carla K. Johnson
CHICAGO (AP) — Celeste Castillo, a Guatemalan immigrant, was invited to a news conference with Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius early last year to help promote enrollment in the country’s new health insurance marketplaces.
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Castillo learned that $800 a month she received from her estranged husband in Panama — his Social Security check — had been counted as part of her income, disqualifying her from Medicaid. That was an error, according to several independent experts interviewed by the AP. In a reassessment of her case, under rules for the Medicaid expansion established in the Affordable Care Act, the money was determined to be a gift from her husband to help pay for his daughter’s college education.
Wayne Turner, staff attorney at the National Health Law Program in Washington, D.C., says the Illinois about-face makes sense to him. The new Medicaid rules allow Illinois officials to consider the husband’s contribution a gift because Castillo, while married, files income taxes separately from her husband. Read the full article here. »
