Our family currently receives assistance from Medicaid. We are able to get Medicaid because we passed the means test which was based on our income and assets. We live off of meager income. The wife and I both work at minimum wage jobs. We really have to watch our expenses and keep the budget tight. Government assistance programs have gone a long way to helping us stay within our budget. We are always looking for new programs in which we could qualify for.

One of the new programs that I heard about is the free Medicaid cell phone program. Through this program, a household like ours would be able to get a free cell phone with accompanying free minutes. I knew our family really needed this program. We do not have phone service at home because it is too costly for us. A cell phone plan normally costs 40 dollars just for one person. Since we are a family of four it would definitely cost much more. To apply for the cell phone, we went through Safelink Wireless. Since we are already Medicaid recipients, we only had to show proof that we were on Medicaid in order to apply. For those people that are not on Medicaid, you would probably need to show some proof of your income and assets. Another thing is that Safelink might not be running this program in every state yet. If it is not in your state, you can try out some other wireless providers like Reachout Wireless or Assurance Wireless.

Soon after the application process, we received our free cell phone for Medicaid recipients. I wished we could have gotten more than one phone but the rules that each household could only get one phone. We were also only given 55 free minutes per month. This meant that we could not use the phone frivolously. We really had to keep watch of the amount of minutes that we used. We only use the phone for dire circumstances and we always keep the calls really short. So far, our family has kept within the allotted minutes every month. This program has been a lifesaver for us.