Health insurance for family (MD student with dependents)

[kerouacbivouac]

My husband is leaving the military to go to medical school starting this fall. I'm now an overeducated stay at home parent to one child, although we plan to have more. The university health plan for students with dependents is outrageous--$14k annual fee!!! There's no way we can afford this, and we're hesitant to take on extra student loans to cover it. So, a few questions, because we're thoroughly confused coming from military healthcare...

Can grad student families qualify for Medicaid? We will be using the GI Bill and are not sure if our housing allowance ($1659/month) would disqualify us (any income that does not go towards school, including student loan monies, can disqualify you). Have any other MD student families qualified?

Are there any other families in our situation (med student and stay at home parent with kids) who have found more affordable health coverage? Not interested in a high deductible plan since we plan to have more kids (in a hospital, obviously--unaffordable with a high deductible plan).

Or does everyone just suck it up and take on extra student loans to cover the university family health plan? :-/

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[rbnsafsadgf]

Depends on your state. We won't be much help on here. There is a similar thread in the fin aid forum. Many students with families have their spouse and kids on Medicaid. Loan mony doesn't count as income.

 

[deleted480308]

If you have no pre-existings and are religious, you can use an ACA exempt cost share ministry instead of insurance. We use Samaritans right now....$400 for a family of four. $300 per incident deductable but that's it. The ministry doesn't pay out the money itself, just keeps track of the approved reimbursements so each month you get notice who to send your check to (direct to other member families)

it's not for everyone but it works for us

 

[kerouacbivouac]

Depends on your state. We won't be much help on here. There is a similar thread in the fin aid forum. Many students with families have their spouse and kids on Medicaid. Loan mony doesn't count as income.

We're going to University of Michigan. Thanks for the tip about the financial aid forum--none of the threads were remotely recent so I created a new one. There's gotta be other families out there in my situation, right?! Also, what I read about loan money is that anything not used directly towards school can disqualify you. That is, money used towards tuition and fees, books, etc. doesn't count against you, but money used towards living expenses does. If you've read differently, I would be thrilled!

If you have no pre-existings and are religious, you can use an ACA exempt cost share ministry instead of insurance. We use Samaritans right now....$400 for a family of four. $300 per incident deductable but that's it. The ministry doesn't pay out the money itself, just keeps track of the approved reimbursements so each month you get notice who to send your check to (direct to other member families)

it's not for everyone but it works for us

I didn't even know that existed. We're extremely non-religious, so this wouldn't be an option. Thanks, though!