icpc and health insurance. HELP!

could you just get insurance for the baby? We thought we were going to have to do that with kelcee for a few months in between jobs. One of the wide known health insureres was about $30-40 a month with like a $40 copay. For a few months we figured that wasn't bad.

maybe. i just don't know how. where do i start? i don't mind paying if that is the only way. BUT remember, this won't be my child. he will still have his legal birthname- first and last, and technically be a ward of the state of CA. will insurance companies allow you to buy ins for kids that are not yours? i don't know...this is all new to me. :)

That I don't know. I really don't know where to start except to call another county maybe and see if someone is willing to give you some insight and direction since your sw isn't very helpful.

Blue Cross Blue Shield offers temporary or transitioning insurance. Try them!

I really don't think you can purchase insurance for a child without his/her birth certificate and proof you are legally responsible for that child via either birth or adoption. I know my ins won't allow me to even add our niece until the adoption is final and they get the adoption decree. Forget medicaid! It took us about 4 months to get that straight with our state for our niece. The child should be entitled to medicaid in the state you move to but it takes so darn long I don't know if it's worth it! Not sure what you can do...I know here in Florida they have a childrens health program for kids who don't have any health insurance but I don't think a foster child would qualify...

Your cw is wrong. If the child's health insurance is currently paid for by the state, then the ICPC requires medical care payment to continue. One way or the other, your state is supposed to make sure the fc has medical care. Period. It is easier if the child qualifies for Medicaid, but should not be necessary. The sending state is supposed to cover it--even to the point of paying out of its state pool funds, if necessary, for coverage in the new state. Call your state's ICPC admin office for this information to give to your cw. A foster child should not be on the foster parents' policy. The fps are not responsible for medical care payment. If the child is Title IV-E or otherwise qualifies for Medicaid as a foster child, then he/she must qualify for Medicaid in the receiving state, that is an ICPC rule. The ICPC should include that medical coverage. If Medicaid in the sending state covers something the child needs that is not paid for by Medicaid in the receiving state, then the sending state is still responsible for that care, just has to find a different way to pay it to local providers in the receiving state. If the parents currently pay for the child's health coverage, that would be a different ball game. The local agency in the receiving state is supposed to handle the enrollment. I found I had to call a few times to ensure it got done. You don't get a Medicaid number or card right away, true, but the coverage is retroactive to the day the child enters the state. Most Medicaid/state-based health insurance programs won't reimburse you--you have to stiff a Medicaid-accepting provider until the number comes in. That was pretty easy for us. I simply told our regular ped's office that she was a fc from out of state and that her Medicaid enrollment was in process. They were very understanding and seemed to know the drill. It was no problem. On another topic, I'm not sure how your ICPC will work if you are moving from one state to another. The process is not really designed for that. You will have to get there first, leaving fc behind, pass homestudy, etc., (perhaps get re-licensed) done by the local agency in the receiving state, then wait for the ICPC process to go through. All that can easily take months and chew through your three-month timeframe (to TPR or are you in the interlocutory period for an adoption?).

hadley-wow..lots of info. here are some answers: they said something about this, but said that they get in trouble for using these funds so we should try to do something else. lol. of course, right? i got a big long speech about what would happen if baby had to be hospitalized....it would cost the state dearly. he is ABSOLUTELY title IV-E and has our equivalent of medicaid here in cali. our case is unusual as we were already planning on moving out of state when we got a call for our child's birth sibling. obviously they want our boys to be together, so they are working with us. so far they are saying 100% that the baby is being allowed to come with us when we move in a few weeks. we were never licensed bc we are considered a relative placement. we were told they are not sure what the receiving state will accept bc we have completed our training and homestudy, and we have been told we may have to start over. but we have already tpr'ed. we are just waiting for the appeal period (plus one additional month so that he will have been with us 6 months) to pass to file for adoption.you know....i'd feel badly....but they called me THREE DAYS after i sold my house and planned to move. a judge had told them months earlier to find us. i absolutely am not going to send my entire family to live 3 months without me while i stay here (and miss my baby going to kindergarten :( ) and i also will not leave the baby behind. our icpc worker assures us this will not be a problem for the state we are moving to. actually, when our SW called to say that we might not get to take the baby i asked if he needed to go to fostercare while we waited (more of a statement to see where he was at than something i would really do) he emphatically said that was not an option they wanted to consider since this was "our baby.") so we shall see.hkolln- what did you do for ins, then?

We did not have insurance for her for those 4 months (she had Idaho Medicaid but not accepted here in Florida)...but when we took her to the doctor for her physical after coming here (we got a list of medicaid doctors from the local DCS dept here) we explained our situation and they had no problems seeing her. They said they would wait for the medicaid to become effective and all we had to show was our receipt showing we had applied for Florida Medicaid. They just submitted her claims once medicaid was effective here. Thank God they were patient! BTW: The local doctor said they would not accept Idaho Medicaid for payment...and according to the ICPC person they do not do the applying for medicaid...the SW had to (we found this out only after we applied ourselves!). The doctor wanted Florida Medicaid insurance. And our niece is also Title IV so she gets medicaid til age 18. It just took along time for them to approve her for medicaid because the sending state (Idaho) had to submit a proof of termination before the receiving state (Florida) would enroll her. Then Florida couldn't decide if she was a "foster child" or a "Relative" and which medicaid to place her under (category). Since we are licensed foster parents they finally figured out to place her into the "foster child" category. That took alot of back and forth. See if you can find a doctor whom understands your situation and will wait it out til medicaid becomes effective. That way you won't have any money out of pocket and they can submit the claims once the medicaid is approved. And we do NOT have a medicaid card for our niece. The SW here said she didn't have one but she did give me her medicaid number so I can use that if there is an emergency. Once we adopt her I'm going to request an ID card if possible.

For an ICPC you'll a case worker in the state your moving to. They will have to monitor things until the adoption is final. Part of their job IS to file papers to switch over the insurance. They HAVE to do this, specially since legally it's still considered a foster child (eventhough it's really an adoptive placement) I would contact DCS in the county that your moving to and give them a heads up and see what they have to say. By ICPC & ICAMA laws they have to do this...don't worry, your baby WILL have insurance. What to do until it's switched? Go to the ER. All hospitals will take ANY including out of state medical cards. Or find a doctor that will hold off billing until it's switched..The ins will be retro'd back to the first day the child was in the new state. Or have all the bills sent to the case worker.

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for the info. i feel so much better. :) sometimes i wish my social worker knew as much as the people on adoption.com :)

I'm glad we could help. I am, however, still concerned and wondering about how an ICPC works when you are not in the receiving state to be approved by them. It can't go through to your new local agency until it is your new local agency, kwim? ICPC works like this: the local agency in the sending state fills out the request for ICPC and sends it to the sending state's state ICPC admin office. That office looks it over and decides if it meets the sending state's requirements for placement out of state. If it doesn't, it sends back to the local office for more info or changes. If it does, it send the packet to the receiving state's ICPC admin office. The receiving state's ICPC admin office looks it over and decides if it meets the receiving state's requirements. If it doesn't, it must go back through the sending state's ICPC admin office and back down to the sending state's local agency office where it gets fixed. Then the packet goes back through the whole chain again to the receiving state's ICPC admin office. If the packet meets state requirements, then it is sent on to the receiving state's local office--the office serving the resource home. All of this happens by interagency drop--no electronic or fax transmission allowed for a host of bureaucratic reasons. When the receiving state's local office receives the packet, it does its own checks then notifies the sending local office that it has received an approved ICPC. THEN the sending local office must send a request for services through the whole chain again. Only when the receiving local office receives an approved request for services from its state office will it assign a local cw and start putting local services--including Medicaid enrollment--into process. When we went through this, I called each next stop once per week to keep track of what was where. Actually, I kept calling our state office until it occurred to me to call the sending state's state office--and found out the local sending office sat on it for several months! I also found I had to call our local office several times after it had received approved paperwork to ask about getting a cw, etc. I don't think anything would have happened had I not kept asking for it. It pays to be persistent, but not come across as disturbed :) Anyway, the upshot is that no one is supposed to move a child across state lines without ICPC approval--it's literally a federal and state offense--and I still don't understand how you can be approved by the receiving state when you don't live there? Under the ICPC, the receiving state not only has the duty to check you out for the sending state but also the right to check you out to make sure you pass its standards. They can't do that if you are not there. It is in your state's interest, to a degree, to just hand you the baby and say "so long." Don't sign anything, expecially anything that refers to any kind of "custody" without a lawyer looking at it. You don't want custody...you want "placement." Please forgive me if I'm telling you something you already know. If I were you, I would not take a sw's word for what will work. I would contact my own state ICPC admin, the receiving state ICPC admin, and the receiving state local agency in the country/district to which I'm moving. The state offices, especially, should give you much more clear answers than the local workers. ICPC admins are high-level professionals that work to federal regulations. Perhaps there is an expedited process (reg 7?) as they use for domestic infant adoption that I don't know about. Be sure, though, that they will accept these kids as foster kids even though you are not there for ICPC approval. While wishing you and the kids a smooth move, I'm really curious about this. It seems very cart before the horse....

In Tallahassee they are doing electronic ICPC's now. Only reason I know that is my hubby called the ICPC admin there to see what the holdup on the adoption home study for our niece was and the guy he spoke to couldn't find anything online...then mentioned they are moving everything to electronic. But he did find the paperwork though and sent it on instead. He blamed the move from paper to electronic as the holdup. I also agree with hadley2...How can you take the child across state lines without the ICPC approved? We had to go thru so much red tape to get approved and also go thru alot of messups until we were able to bring our niece here. They normally don't allow you to just take a child without approval..especially considering the laws both states have to abide by. Best thing for you to do is contact your local agency where you are moving to and get info from them regarding the correct and legal way to handle this. The ICPC coordinator there can help you also. I would hate for you to take the child to where you are moving to and then have to return the child because ICPC was not approved. And the sending state may require something totally different then the receiving state (in our case the sending state Idaho required us to be licensed foster parents before even initiating the ICPC to move our niece here however Florida said we didn't need to be licensed but could do relative kinship care). It can be complicated and everyone may not agree so it's best to have everything ironed out before moving the child. When we did our ICPC we had to continuosly call both the ICPC admin to see status and the SW's in both states (sending and receiving) because they tend to stall alot. Paperwork gets on someones desk and then sits for weeks! It's very frustrating.