Healthy Indiana Plan

Currently, I don’t have any health insurance. I think this is true for most of my peers, and for many low-income people, whether they’re low-income because of lifestyle and career choices, like me, or because they lack the economic mobility to obtain incomes that would allow for jobs that get a whole life policy with dividends and health coverage. None of them have incomes that would allow the purchase of individual insurance.

Currently, I have access to some medical care through the Monroe County Volunteers in Medicine clinic, which offers free medical and dental care, similar to what you would receive from an Atlanta orthodontist  or a family doctor or dentist to residents of Monroe County who are below 200% of the federal poverty level (FPL). This is certainly a good resource, but I’m not sure how far the care extends for advanced procedures, or in the event of some kind of emergency or catastrophic illness or injury.

Indiana recently introduced the Healthy Indiana Plan which is state-subsidized health insurance for low-income Indiana residents. Again, to qualify for this, one must be a legal Indiana resident, between 19 and 64, and make less than 200% of the FPLwhich amounts to:

Family Size Maximum Annual Income* Approximate Maximum Monthly Income
1 $20,400 $1,700
2 $27,360 $2,280
3 $34,320 $2,860
4 $41,280 $3,440
5 $48,240 $4,020

The cost of this insurance will be between 2 and 5% of the gross family income for qualifying people, and according to the HIP website, the coverage includes:

physician services, prescriptions, diagnostic exams, home health services, outpatient hospital, inpatient hospital, hospice, preventive services, family planning, and case and disease management.Mental health coverage is also included and is similar to coverage for physical health, and includes substance abuse treatment, inpatient, outpatient, and prescription drugs.

The HIP coverage is 3-tiered and structured like this:

  • A POWER Account valued at $1,100 per adult to pay for medical costs. Contributions to the account are made by the State and each participant (based on ability to pay). No participant will pay more than 5% of his/her gross family income on the plan.
  • A basic commercial benefits package once annual medical costs exceed $1,100.
  • Coverage for preventive services up to $500 a year at no cost to participants.

This seems very Republican (relative to some of the rhethoric I’ve heard in the news about different suggestions for health coverage policies) in it’s design because of the inclusion of the POWER Account (which I assume is what I’ve heard called a medical savings account) and because the plan seems to be administered by two private carriers: Anthem Blue Cross/Blue Shield and MDWise with AmeriChoice.

I believe that coverage will be limited to around 30,000 people (due to limitations on funding) and the plan will be funded by an increased tax on cigarette sales, but haven’t confirmed this in the actual release of the plan.

Of personal interest to me is the fact that it seems that much of the plan information is accessed and administered via the Internet. All plan participants must have an e-mail account (or will be given one if they do not) and both carriers list “Community Resource Centers” with internet access as part of their “Enhanced Services”. I think that more and more social services are using Internet technologies because they allow for cost savings. However, I fear that the costs of home Internet access (particularly for people with bad/no credit), unfamiliarity or discomfort with using Internet services, and the restrictions on access to public Internet resources like libraries or community resource centers (hours that the facilities are open may not match work schedules, no childcare options) may make the navigation of social services more alienating for their users.

In any case, I’m going to apply for the HIP and blog about my experiences.

Link to HIP home page
Link to summary of HIP

cartography

  On tour, I got to catch up with some reading and finished The Power of Maps, which Chiara gave me for my birthday.  One of the things that was most compelling about the book was a brief overview of movements trying to redefine the role of geography and cartography in society, aknowledging the knowledge of any person and their ability to express that knowledge through maps.  One project was the Society for Human Exploration, founded by a geographer named William Bunge  and their mapping of Detroit, The Detroit Geographic Expedition I.  I was able to find a little more about this in an article titled The Academy in Activism and Activism in the Academy: Collaborative Research Methodologies and Radical Geography.

From that article:

Bunge in his description of the early years of this experiment reclaims the use of the words ‘expedition’ and ‘exploration’ so tied to the geographical tradition but redefines their use (Bunge in Peet 1979; p. 31-35). While mentioning the usefulness of the expedition/exploration tradition for those that undertook them he goes on to establish the ideas behind a new exploration. Bunge defines this ‘new’ type of expedition as a “human” one: it is “a democratic, as opposed to an elitist expedition.” “[H]uman explorations are ‘contributive,’ (resource contributing instead of resource taking)…Priorities are totally reversed,” (Bunge in Peet 1979; p. 35). The traditional idea of the ‘field’ and the geographer’s relationship to those who lived there also changes dramatically and here one can also see some more of the organizational philosophy behind the D.G.E.I. experiment:
“Local people are to be incorporated as students and as professors. They are not to be further exploited. Their point of view is given first place. It is democratic also in that if planning work results, and that is one of the main purposes of the Expedition, then the planners, the geographers, are expected to live in the mess that they create. (Bunge in Peet 1979; p. 35)

Ground Ups, Herculaneum, Basilica @ Art Hospital. 8-11p. $6.

Friday, February 8
8:00- 11:00 PM
ART HOSPITAL (1021 S. Walnut St.)
www.arthospital.net
$6

GROUND UPS
HERCULANEUM
BASILICA

HERCULANEUM is comprised of members of Chicago's Icy Demons, Head of Femur, and Cursive.  Their seven-piece jazz band takes you through the most unimaginably cool licks, groovy lopsided rhythms, and sincere confessionals, all the while executing it with authentic jazz character.

            Dig on this rap, cats:   http://www.herculaneumsound.com/images/timeout_web.jpg

BASILICA is Bloomington's carefully-guarded destabilizing force.  They share their engaging vision of our surreal world through spectacular arcs of violin melodies, serpentine guitar harmonies, jet-propelled rhythms, and dazzling video projections.   www.myspace.com/basilicaproject

GROUND UPS are a glorious train wreck of eclectic influences.  Their impressions of jazz, twelve-tone, Balinese, and musique concrete are performed with raging expression, creating a dark scribble of noise-rock/ trash-jazz drums, saxophone, trumpet, and vocals.  www.fmsmprc.com
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Vegan Diner @ 1021 W. 6th St. 12-3p.

This Sunday, Jan. 27th
12-3pm
1021 W. 6th St. (Abbey's House)
A benefit for Deep Roots Animal Sanctuary

Vegan diner food (breakfast and lunch items) served up by a saucy  
waitstaff for dirt cheap! $1 items, $3 plates. A gluten-free option  
will be available!
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Discounted AT&T Wireless Services for IU Community

Indiana University and IUPUI have an agreement with at&t Wireless to provide personal cellular services to students, faculty, and staff at discounted rates. Students receive an 8% discount on monthly rate plans. Employees receive a 12% discount.

Link

Los Angeles is cold …

… and people are selling  hats on the metro.  “Peruvian style hats.  Keep your ears warm, in colors to match your outfit or your shoes.  Only five dollars.”  The mans sales partner then repeats the pitch in Spanish.  A teenage boy staggers down the aisle and asks, “can I please have a dollar.  I need something to get something to eat.  I’m starving.  My stomach hurts.”  He seems so young, in the childlike way that his voice expects someone to take care of him, implores that someone take care of him.  Seconds after the hungry boy moves to the next car, another teenage boy in a fashionable jacket and wearing headphones enters the car.  He looks like other boys I have seen on big city public transportation – stylish and handsome, but this boy moves with a quiet confidence instead of the usual swagger.  In a minute, I look over and see that he is covering his face and silently crying.  He tries to compose himself, but the tears keep coming.  The people nearby steal nervous, sympathetic glances, unsure of whether to risk embarrasing the boy by aknowledging his tears.  Finally, the woman sitting across the aisle from him hands him a tissue.  He takes it and gets off at the next stop.  The woman and a man sitting nearby talk about their jobs.  The woman gets off the train and the man shots after her asking if he can give her his number.  The woman says that she’ll see him tomorrow.  The man sighs, contentedly as we sinks back into his seat.  The man and I get off at the same stop.  It is raining steadily now.  He says, “it’s like they say, the further west you go, the wetter you get,” and I can’t wait to be moving eastward again.

purchasing oppression

I was reading this glossy, colorful magazine about revolutionary anarchism and was a little bummed that some of the articles about actions read like the articles in Soldier of Fortune that my friend got when he was going through his self-ascribed “paramilitary skater” phase in his early teens.  It’s always hard for me to read stuff like that because there’s always this seductive quality to it.  It makes me think that most of my political involvement has been by choice and not because my physical or even emotional survival was really wrapped up in whatever cause I was advocating.  And even though I can intellectually construct, not even untruthfully, the connections between those struggles and parts of myself or my history, I always end up having conversations with people who just seem to have this incredible sense of connection and of neccessity to their struggles.  I don’t exactly know what to do with only this disconnected sense that things are wrong.  Ultimately, I think what might be so appealing about clashes with the police is that they, at least for a moment, make a more general injustice a personal injustice and, sometimes, a question of the survival of a community, the individual lives of which one has have often abstracted into an abstract whole, into a matter of personal survival.  To me though, this connection or urgency feels purchased (Has a feeling of personal oppression and a lifestyle stemming from this become a purchaseable commodity like fast food or personal electronics?) and fleeting, but it is seductive.  For those lucky enough to be able to choose quite a deal of the landscape of their lives, choosing to do the right thing, and what exactly composes “the right thing” can seem terrible daunting.

walking through san francisco

“What I’ve come to know is that the death of a loved one and the death of an era are equally sad.”  – Jonathan Wilson in The Best Time in My Life, a selection from the Who We Are exhibition

In San Francisco, on Market street, they still have vintage street cars as part of the public transportation system.  The cars seem to have been collected from cities all over the US that have long since abandoned their street car systems.  It is a strange collision of the active and the nostalgic as the cars creak and clatter but the doors open automatically by some weight sensor when you exit the train.

…

Future Obsolescence Art Opening @ Sweet Hickory (317 e. 3rd st.). 8-11p.

Clyde

OPENING SATURDAY, JANUARY 26th
AT SWEET HICKORY in Bloomington, IN)

Future Obsolescence
presented by Greg Harvester

a presentation of mail art, thirteen years of punk fliers and new
screen-printed art.

8-11 PM

drinks and food provided

show will remain open until Feb. 27th during usual Sweet Hickory hours (2-8
PM)

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