A Mystery!

So, a weird thing has happened to me. At first I was confused, then annoyed, and now I'm just resolved to let it sort itself out. Let's go back in time to June 2015 to see where it all started!

A most accurate drawing of me by one of my students.

Way back in June 2015, I was working not one, not two, but THREE part time jobs. I was teaching 20 hours, in the mornings, Monday through Friday. I was working at Bed Bath and Beyond 20 to 25 hours, in the evenings, Monday through Friday. And I was working at the Coffee House Teen Shelter 16 hours on the weekends. It was a crazy time. But, since all of my jobs were part time, I received no benefits. 

At the time, I was still hoping to get work as an ESL teacher. Ha.

I had been following the whole "Obamacare" rules for a while and it looked like if I didn't go get signed up soon I would be out of luck. I finally went in and got myself signed up. In the end, it ended up costing me $1/month and covered virtually nothing but I was compliant with the law. Yay!

Months later, I was hired for a brand new position that gave me health insurance for the first time! Only after using my new insurance several times to verify it was real did I call up my Obamacare insurance and have it cancelled.The lady on the other end was initially confused I'd want to cancel my insurance but then she was happy for me that I had a new job with better insurance. After this phone call, I settled in to my life of being treated like a real person by a company that appreciates me.

Fast forward one month to November and take note that I got something in the mail that said, "You might qualify for Medi-Cal". "Whatever," I thought. "I don't need that. I have REAL insurance!" I continued about my life. I returned from China in mid-January after an awesome vacation to a GIANT stack of mail to sift through.

Totally worth it, though.

In the mail, I find a special envelope and in it includes my brand new Medi-Cal benefits card.

.

Turns out ignoring that the combination of me being poor and cancelling my other insurance magically got me signed up for Medi-Cal. Now, I've been on Medi-Cal before. I know how hard some people work to even qualify and keep it so I felt SO GUILTY knowing that I had it and didn't need it. What a waste of time and money! A few days later when I had a free afternoon, I decided to try to call some people and cancel it to free up money for someone who had less than me.

It actually took a while to even get the right number. At first, I immediately reached someone for help. That was, of course, because it not the number I needed. You could tell when I finally reached the right number because I sat on hold. I ended up giving up after twenty minutes on hold because it was going on five and I figured I wasn't very likely to reach someone in time before their offices closed. I decided to wait a while. One week led to another and before I knew it almost a month had passed. The guilt started to creep up again.

I finally decided to call again. I was told I was 27th in line and they put on the elevator music. I waited. And waited. I was determined to get through. I knew I would be on hold for a while so I called from my cell phone at work so that I could check emails while the phone rang. 

It got to the point where I finally couldn't take it anymore. I hung up and checked how long I'd been listening to the elevator music: 30 minutes. It felt like an eternity. Well, I'm sorry to the random person who won't get Medi-Cal because I do. I tried. I can't take the waiting. I've already devoted fifty minutes of my life to being on hold. At this point, I'm just going to let myself get disqualified when I get married in July. It should work itself out. But know this, random person: I did try.