Blake writes:
Relocating to another state entails a fair bit of paperwork and administrative busywork. Old accounts must be closed, new ones opened. Dozens of change of address notices must be sent out. Vehicle registration, voter registration, bank accounts, credit card accounts, investment accounts, insurance, utilities – everything is affected. And when the state you're relocating to is thousands of miles away out in the middle of a large body of water the challenge of getting the changes made seems magnified.
Relocating to another state entails a fair bit of paperwork and administrative busywork. Old accounts must be closed, new ones opened. Dozens of change of address notices must be sent out. Vehicle registration, voter registration, bank accounts, credit card accounts, investment accounts, insurance, utilities – everything is affected. And when the state you're relocating to is thousands of miles away out in the middle of a large body of water the challenge of getting the changes made seems magnified.
Changing
our health insurance plans was one of the most important tasks.
Fortunately, despite the well-publicized botched rollout of
Obamacare, the program is working for us. Hawaii has its own
state-run health insurance exchange, which by some rankings was the
worst in the nation back in October when this all started. Its
Executive Director was forced to resign last December. But, like the
national program, the glitches are slowly getting fixed and people
are getting signed up. Here in Hawi there are even rural outreach
kokuas (counselors/aids) who help folks sign up for health insurance
and other community services. We were happy to take advantage of
their help.
First we
had to get denied for Hawaii's expanded Medicaid coverage, than
reapply for coverage with partial financial assistance. (Why the two
systems can't talk to each other I have no idea). The amount of
financial assistance you qualify for is based on your projected
income, which for us will be low this year as we concentrate on
building the house. Next year, when I'm back to painting and Deborah
has her skin care and vacation rental businesses up and running we'll
be making more and therefore will have to pay more, which is fair.
But for now we're delighted to cancel our crappy high deductible
health insurance with Regence Blue Shield in Washington State, the
premiums for which had been increasing steadily year after year until
we were paying $800/month for something that hardly covered anything.
Now we have significantly better coverage with Kaiser-Permanente in
Hawaii and, thanks to the subsidies, we're only paying $100/month! Obviously, that's a huge savings.
Getting
our vehicle over here was another big task. We bought a truck back
in Washington just before Christmas to bring over here, which seems
crazy except that trucks are priced at a premium in Hawaii and the
selection is limited. It costs about $1100 to ship it over from
Seattle and takes about 2 weeks to the Big Island. It gets shipped
to Honolulu first, then gets barged to Kawaihae on our island, which
is only 18 miles from Hawi, but we couldn't pick it up there. We had
to wait for it to go overland to Hilo on the opposite side of the
island (76 miles from Hawi) where we could pick it up. After dealing
with insurance, inspections and registration we now have our
excellent 2009 Nissan Frontier with Hawaii plates. Now we feel somewhat official. Next up: drivers
licenses...
(Photo from the Kohala Mountain News. ROSI stands for Rural Outreach Support Initiative; these ladies were great) |
Hawaii plates! |
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