Ontario man given one-cent cheque from federal farm subsidy programLONDON, Ont. (CP) — When Peter Ocolisan took his farm support payment to his bank and asked if he could cash a cheque for $1 million, he was exaggerating a little.
Actually, the West Lorne, Ont., farmer was off by $999,999.99.
“(The teller) said, ‘This is for just one cent, not a million dollars,”’ Ocolisan said.
Ocolisan, 82, received the cheque for one cent as his final payout from the Net Income Stabilization Account, a federal farm support program.
“I think the government is just teasing me. I expect it cost at least $10 for them to send the cheque,” Ocolisan said.
“This is ridiculous what they are doing.”
When the teller gave Ocolisan his penny, he handed it back to her as a donation to the bank.
“I said, ‘Keep it. It is not worth putting in my pocket.”’
While Ocolisan found some humour in the payment, he said the current problems in the farming industry are nothing to laugh about.
The cattle and grain farmer, who has operated his farm southwest of London, Ont., since 1924, said he’s had to use savings and pension earnings to keep it going. His son has had to take a job driving because he can’t make a living from the farm.
“There is just nothing coming in,” he said. “I don’t know how the heck these young farmers are going to survive.”
And recent farmers’ protests at the Ontario legislature to bring attention to their plight haven’t appeared to faze the government, he said.
A few days after cashing his one-cent cheque, Ocolisan said he was notified by account officials he still has a balance of six cents.
An Agriculture Canada spokeswoman said she couldn’t comment on a specific account, but when the program was wound down the bank was instructed by the federal government to pay out any remaining money to a producer and close the account.
― Huk-L, Monday, 21 March 2005 19:06 (twenty-one years ago)
six years pass...
http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2011/sep/06/state-offers-chance-to-call-for-tenncare-spend/
If you've been waiting for another chance to enroll in TennCare's Standard Spend Down program, get ready to spend the evening by the phone.The state Bureau of TennCare will offer open enrollment 7-9:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time on Monday. For a chance to enroll, call the toll-free number — 1-866-358-3230 — between those hours.
Though the state says the enrollment hotline will be open 7-9:30 p.m. subsequent weekdays "until 2,500 interested applicants call in," during both open enrollments so far (October 2010 and February 2011) the state reached the call limit before the first hour of enrollment expired.
The Standard Spend Down program is a waiver to the regular Medicaid/TennCare program through which a limited number of low-income people or people who have high, unpaid medical bills and are also aged, blind, disabled or the caregiver relative of a Medicaid-eligible child can receive health insurance, if they meet all the requirements.
Some of those requirements, listed in full at http://www.tn.gov/TennCare, include restrictions on income and resources (a household income cannot exceed $241 for one person, for example, or $325 for a family of four; resources must not exceed, for example, $3,000 for a family of two). Unpaid medical bills must have been accrued within the past 90 days.
Getting through on the hotline doesn't guarantee a spot in the Spend Down program; it only guarantees you'll be sent an application to fill out. But it is the only way to get a Standard Spend Down application. A number of people who called in February could have learned they weren't eligible before calling, by reading the requirements, but those calls still count toward the state's 2,500-call limit.
― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 21 February 2012 10:33 (fourteen years ago)