Ever wondered where the TOBACCO SETTLEMENT MONEY went????

We had our Dr. appts today, which started a little different than usual... We have chosen for Lane's care  to go see Dr. R.... He is at Baptist Medical Hospital,  they are not a CFF Clinic, but he along with his entire staff are so awesome.. He has 30 or 40 years in the CF field and DID work in the Children's Hospital clinic for many many years prior to branching off on his own.... 

Our visits are so stress free, we go to the Baptist Hospital, and Dr. R spreads his CF appts out to prevent cross contamination, and he spends alot of time with his patients... they are never in a hurry, no rush, no crowd... we are able to do PFTs right there in the office and when we do blood and x-rays we go down stairs to labs, which is also excellent..... Best POKERs ever I tell ya...  Over all we have been absolutely pleased and blessed with Lane's care... Oh and if there is any problem, like one time we were in the city and Lane had a strong cough going on and Dr. Rs office said bring him right over... I was so amazed...  Seriously I cannot begin to say enough great things about his entire staff..... I have NEVER had one single complaint... It is such a blessing to love your medical staff... Now we did however have to forgo a few small things that you do receive in a clinic setting, such as a social worker, or nutritionist, but we have never really gone to a clinic environment so we don't really know any other way... I am certain that the CFF Clinics are awesome as well, we really have no idea since we have always been private.... I did want to be able to speak to a social worker or nutritionist, but it was always a sacrifice we chose to make in order to keep Lane with DR. R...

Well good news is DR. R now brings in a social worker, nutritionist, and a respiratory therapist and what a blessing....  

Our time with the Social Worker was a huge blessing... She went over some programs with us concerning insurance... My husband has the best insurance ever and we are truly truly grateful for that, but it does still leaves us with co payments, deductibles and they add up.... we have never applied for Medicaid because I do not feel we qualify.... But would love the secondary insurance... Well we are in Oklahoma, so I do not know what it is like else where but what I learned yesterday is we are going to try for Medicaid anyway, she explained that it is different with a disability, and we were also advised to apply for Social Security benefits... What I didn't know was the first phase to SS was based on income and if we are denied then there is another program called TEFRA, it is also a medicaid program and to qualify you just have to be disabled (which she said he should qualify for) and have a denial from SS.... Now this program is paid for by the Tobacco Settlements...WOW never knew that, wondered what happened with all that Tobacco money... Well here it is... So basically it looks like through all this applying, either we should receive medicaid through SS or TEFRA which would help greatly... So we shall see...