Changing Address to Qualify for Medicaid

[tac86]

Hi. I am a born U.S. citizen. I live in Utah with my wife. My wife is going through an adjustment of status (I-485) right now. We think we are about 2 months away from getting her green card.

Anyways, we just found out that she is pregnant and meet the income requirements for Medicaid. (I am a full-time student in school right now. My dad filed as a joint sponsor.) We applied and she got denied. Utah is one of the few states that doesn't waive the Medicaid 5-year waiting period for lawfully present pregnant women. We're kind of screwed because I'm not making enough right now to even purchase insurance and definitely won't have enough money to pay out-of-pocket. I'm really getting nervous.

My parents live in Colorado. Colorado DOES waive the 5-year waiting period for pregnant women. She is eligible there. We are thinking about "changing" our address (to my parent's house) to Colorado so we can get Medicaid for her. We would still live in Utah. Obviously we would need to attend doctor appointments there and possibly have our baby there, but that is fine.

The point of concern is with USCIS and her application. If we applied for Medicaid in another state (Colorado) would this cause any problems with her application? Would we need to send in a change of address to USCIS? How would that affect the processing time? Would it cause there to be discrepancies on our applications? Does USCIS even have access to Medicaid's database? (Could they see that we listed two different addresses?)

Any help would be greatly appreciated! We're not trying to cheat any system. We really just need help from anyone who knows this kind of territory. I think it's crappy that states can uphold/outlaw/waive specific Medicaid (federally funded) requirements. We wouldn't have to deal with this if we were in nearly any other state.

 

[newacct]

She can only get Colorado's plan if she lives there, and if she doesn't live there but claims on Medicaid application forms that she does, that's fraud.

She can get a plan from the Obamacare marketplace in Utah. Healthcare.gov says that applicants for "Adjustment to LPR Status" are eligible. She can get the subsidy since your household income is low enough; although the subsidy is normally for people with between 100% and 400% of the poverty level; there is an exception where people with less than 100% of poverty level can still get subsidy if they do not qualify for Medicaid in their state due to immigration status (which is true for your wife).

Unfortunately, the open enrollment period for this year has passed. She would qualify for a special enrollment period for 60 days after she went from a status that doesn't qualify for the marketplace to one that does, but that would only help if she filed I-485 in the last 60 days.

 

[tac86]

I appreciate the information, but it seems that we are back at square one. What can I do?