Denied Medi Cal, but my application was altered?

I was laid off back in May, and employer paid for COBRA through June. End of June, I applied for insurance through Covered California and was declared conditionally eligible for Medi Cal based on my income.

Fast forward to October, my wife and son are on Medi Cal but I still haven’t received my benefits card nor any paperwork, so I call the county but there’s no case under my SSN. So I use the online chat for Covered California to figure out what’s going on. They tell me that the county has yet to process my application so they’ll forward it to them again.

Yesterday, I called my local office to get an update, but of course can’t reach a real person. So I sign up for a BenefitsCal account and link my case using my personal information only to find out I was denied for “failure to submit verifications.” This is odd since I submitted my unemployment check as proof of my income. But then I notice that my address in the denial letter is incorrect – it’s an address I’ve never seen before.

I go to my local office and they tell me my only options are to re-apply or to submit a request for an appeals hearing. So I come back home and dig around the Covered California site, trying to figure out why my address was changed, and in the transaction history, I uncovered what I believe is evidence that my application was altered to prevent me from ever receiving my Notice of Action.

Not only was my address changed to some random address I’ve never seen before, but my preferred method of communication was updated from email to mail. It also looks like my phone number was removed. Oddly, even my marital status was changed from Married to Single Never Married, and my wife and son were removed from my application. Of course, all these edits were submitted Nov. 1, with the same time stamp as my denial.

Now I’m trying to figure out what my next course of action is. Is my only option really requesting an appeal? It really looks like my case worker went in and maliciously altered my application in order to deny benefits without me ever finding out.

submitted by /u/jujuberabbit
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