WA Cares Act

There is nothing quite so frustrating as being on hold (currently with the State), and having the recording tell you to go to their website for more information. Only the website they are sending you to doesn’t have the information you are looking for!

This is about the WA Cares Act, and I am here to tell you, that the process is not good. The program doesn’t even technically start until the beginning of next year, but you have to apply for an exemption by the end of the year – and you can’t start until October 1st.

This is a program that I think means well, and it could be great. But the state of WA has done some things that are insane with this. First of all, everyone is in the plan, unless you get an exemption. Of course, you will never get any benefits from it if you are close to retirement, because you will not be in it long enough to be eligible. So you would think that would be an easy fix, right? Just exempt people (or let them apply for exemptions) who are close to retirement. But no, the state wants money from you, whether or not you are going to benefit from this.

But if you have a Long Term Care policy, you can apply for an exemption. Except that you can’t, because the website where you do that keeps going down. I am pretty sure it is because of the volume of visitors, but one would think that they would have taken that into consideration – after all, it is not surprising that people are going to want to be exempted, if they already have Long Term Care coverage.

So I am trying to apply for an exemption, except that the site keeps going down. I typed the same things, several times, getting a little further each time. The last time I have no idea if it took what I typed or not. But the site no longer lets me select what it says I need to, and also doesn’t offer me any alternatives. So I called them, and have been on hold for over 30 minutes, trying to figure out what my next step is.

All the while I am getting more and more frustrated and pissed off. I would like to give it up for the day, and probably will. I am worried about the fact that the State is giving people only 2 months to opt out. It shouldn’t take that long, but I have little to no faith that the state is going to be able to get this done.

The worst part is that there is no recourse – no one to call if you have a problem, no one to explain anything to you.

UPDATE:

It took a couple days, but I finally did get the application done last week. And the amazing thing is that we heard today that the exemption is approved. I am glad it was do quick, but I do think it could have been more transparent. I think I was stressed for nothing, and would have liked to had some updates so I knew that it was received and being worked on. My biggest fear was that something had happened to the application with all the problems the website had, and I wouldn’t find out there was a problem until it was too late to fix it. Oh well, at least it’s done now.

2 comments to WA Cares Act

  • darrin j dillman

    how did you get a reply and how long was it. i have went threw the same issue

    • Judy Stoffel Loewen

      The response came quicker than I thought it would… don’t remember exact timing. I think the worst part was having no faith in the system, because of how rough it was at the start.

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