My mom did not inform Medicaid of income, need advice
Hello, back in 2019, my mom, me and my brother did landscaping gig jobs for money. Each of us made 11,000 dollars being self employed. My mom apparently did not report this money to Medicaid (Medi-Cal since we are in Cali) and none of us filed taxes for that year. We were not able to do the gig jobs in 2020 because of covid and made no self employment income that year. We all applied for PUA in 2020 and got PUA unemployment money during 2020 and 2021. I don’t think my mom told Medicaid of the unemployment money either. We ended up filing taxes for 2019 only just this year because PUA ended and we needed to submit proof that we worked. Here is where I’m very concerned. I’m aware that because of the Public Health emergency, Medicaid could not kick us off the program in 2020 and 2021 if we had increased income but what about the money we made in 2019, before the PHE, they never knew about? Since we worked in 2019 before the PHE and thus we weren’t safe from being kicked off the program back then, will Medicaid check the 2019 taxes we submitted recently and ask why we didn’t report it and consider it fraud? Will they even care about the 2019 income or even check it? If they do check it, will they just call us and ask us to report it? Would they simply ask us to pay back money and never let us back on the program? Or will they hire an investigator right off the bat before they even ask us about the income because they think its fraud and try and charge us with crimes? Am I worrying too much and jumping the gun here?
I’ve never ever been the one responsible for telling Medicaid of income. My mom has done it my whole life. I have little idea how this all works. If they do send an investigator or try and get us in trouble, would they only go after my mom or would they go for all of us even though shes the one that’s always filled out the eligibility forms? I was 18-19 back in 2019 and I’m 22 now.
BTW, my mom took us off Medicaid a few months back because shes all worried.