The ACA Medi-Cal Limbo (with added Married Filing Jointly fun!)

I’ve seen other posts about this, but I feel like my situation is somewhat unique.

I’m very low-income but I just started a shitty part-time AI job at $25/hour. It’s a lot less than I got when I was at my peak working at an ad agency but my field has been crushed by a variety of things so I’m just happy to be making more than $0.

I was getting ACA with fairly generous discounts but I got kicked off because I was making $0 and they tried to charge me $500 / month for the insurance I was getting subsidies for, so I just let it lapse.

I applied for Medi-Cal, and I thought I was being transparent when I told them that my mom gave me $1500 as a gift and that was how I paid my rent. That destroyed my Medi-Cal chances. They kicked it to a judge who told me I had to sign a paper saying that that was a one-time gift.

Now I feel like I don’t want to move ahead with it because:

a) I don’t know how many hours I’m going to get with the new job (it’s been very intermittent and may not be enough to even pay rent let alone buy health insurance) and it could put me over the top, and

b) because if my mom gives me a gift (she probably can’t because she’s retired and doesn’t have a ton of money lying around), I’m unsure if I’d be guilty of perjury.

The top things off, my Medi-Cal rep seems like she has a vendetta (she talks to me like she’s a right-winger trying to stamp out Medi-Cal and I’m some kind of welfare queen), and it seems like she’s already accusing me of lying. She brought up some Unemployment benefits I received in August of 2023 as something I “never reported.” She’s giving me anxiety and I’ve ignored her last two calls.

The part that makes this all unique is that my ex and I never ended up getting a divorce because we’re friends and we never really cared about it despite the fact that we separated six years ago. This has really screwed me up because now when I go to sign up for ACA, and I click married filing jointly, I don’t receive any discounts, which means I’d be paying over $400 / month for just a shitty bronze EPO. I may have to decide between food and health insurance.

Anyway, I’m completely off health insurance. I’ve started the paperwork for a dissolution but even that costs $400 – 500. Allegedly I can amend my ACA after the divorce and I’ll start getting discounts so it’ll probably just be ramen for a few months, but holy shit this sucks. Is this an r/povertyfinance crosspost? LOL IDK pray I don’t get sick. Please don’t be mad at me for not having my shit together because I know I don’t.