Dealing With Those Confusing Acronyms
By James Donahue
We are all familiar with those abbreviations for long commonly used names and phrases like DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles), RNC (Republican National Committee) or CEO (Corporate Executive Officer.) We see them in news headlines and news reports daily. They are called acronyms, and appear to be an invention by the media or government document offices that gives writers the ability to refer to long titles in short cropped phrases.
News writers have been quick over the years to utilize the more commonly accepted acronyms in their stories rather than type out the long names. Thus we see so many of them it is getting hard to remember them all.
We tend to make fun of having to get our brains used to determining the meaning of so many acronyms when they are constantly flooding our news stories. We all remember the old joke: “I think I’ll join the CIO because everybody I see, I owe.” But do you remember what CIO stands for? Would you believe it now ranges from Chief Information Officer or Chief Investment Officer to Central Intelligence Officer and Coordinating Information Officer?
We mostly remember CIO as part of the organized labor movement that became AFL-CIO. In that case CIO was a reference to the name Congress of Industrial Organizations. And AFL meant American Federation of Labor. They were two powerful labor organizations that joined forces in about 1950.
Since Trump came to power we have all had to learn the meaning of a new raft of peculiar sounding acronyms like DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) dealing with a presidential order to expel as many dark skinned families from U.S. Citizenship as possible, or MAGA, a reference to Trump’s political campaign slogan, Make America Great Again.
It is getting so that folks need an acronym reference resource (ARR) at their fingertips just to understand a contemporary news report.
All joking aside, the seniors of California just received a brief little notice in their mailbox titled “Pickle Amendment; Important Notice Regarding Your Medi-Cal Eligibility.” The brief little letter appears in just about every language known to man so it takes three pages of about ten-point type to deliver.
First of all, many of us new to California have no idea what the phrase Medi-Cal means. We looked it up in our ARR. It is a reference to California’s Medicaid program designed to help low-income families, seniors, people with disabilities, foster care children, pregnant women and “childless adults with incomes below 138 percent of the federal poverty level.”
The definition of federal poverty level is almost a book in itself. It varies by state. When you study those guidelines it seems that a person needs to be really impoverished to qualify for assistance. In my case, since I receive monthly Social Security payments and a pension through my former employer, I find that studying this complicated notice is a complete waste of time. For the point I am making in this story, however, I followed through.
The letter reads: “If you are aged, blind or disabled you may be eligible for Medi-Cal benefits without a share of cost if you qualify under the Pickle Amendment.” Right away we must ask, what in hell is the Pickle Amendment? A government resource website reveals that:
“The Pickle Amendment (Section 503 of P.L. 94-566), provides continued medical assistance to individuals who are terminated from financial assistance under the OAA, APTD, or ANB programs, due to excess income.”
Got that?
Let’s pick that opening sentence apart, using our handy ARR. The OAA can be an acronym for Old Age Assistance, Older Americans Act, Office of Academic Affiliations (Department of Veterans Affairs), and Organization of Africans in the Americas. Take your pick. We have to assume one of the first two definitions apply here.
So what is APTD? That was relatively easy. It means Aid to the Permanently and Totally Disabled.
The meaning of "ANB program" is a mystery. A list of 25 definitions via Google range from American National Bank to Alaska Native Brotherhood and a rock band named Agoraphobic Nosebleed. Two more interesting interpretations that may apply are Assault N Battery and Argument from Nonbelief (theistic debate.) Have fun figuring that one out.
Moving on to the second sentence in paragraph one: We are told: “Certain individuals continue to be eligible for Medicaid as long as their combined income and resources, disregarding all SSA increases since they lost SSI, does not exceed the current SSI standard.”
What is SSA? There are over 200 meanings behind this acronym but the best choices are either Social Security Administration or Social Security Act. Thus we must disregard all social security increases “since we lost SSI?” Do we know that we ever lost SSI? What is SSI? There are over 140 meanings behind that acronym but the one we think it applies to is Social Security Income. So then does that sentence make any sense? Think about that for a minute.
And thus we have the government’s explanation of the Pickle Amendment. It has left us totally confused already and we haven’t even started reading the letter.
In the second sentence the letter states that “To qualify, ALL of the following must apply to you.” There follows a list of four things that must apply:
By James Donahue
We are all familiar with those abbreviations for long commonly used names and phrases like DMV (Department of Motor Vehicles), RNC (Republican National Committee) or CEO (Corporate Executive Officer.) We see them in news headlines and news reports daily. They are called acronyms, and appear to be an invention by the media or government document offices that gives writers the ability to refer to long titles in short cropped phrases.
News writers have been quick over the years to utilize the more commonly accepted acronyms in their stories rather than type out the long names. Thus we see so many of them it is getting hard to remember them all.
We tend to make fun of having to get our brains used to determining the meaning of so many acronyms when they are constantly flooding our news stories. We all remember the old joke: “I think I’ll join the CIO because everybody I see, I owe.” But do you remember what CIO stands for? Would you believe it now ranges from Chief Information Officer or Chief Investment Officer to Central Intelligence Officer and Coordinating Information Officer?
We mostly remember CIO as part of the organized labor movement that became AFL-CIO. In that case CIO was a reference to the name Congress of Industrial Organizations. And AFL meant American Federation of Labor. They were two powerful labor organizations that joined forces in about 1950.
Since Trump came to power we have all had to learn the meaning of a new raft of peculiar sounding acronyms like DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) dealing with a presidential order to expel as many dark skinned families from U.S. Citizenship as possible, or MAGA, a reference to Trump’s political campaign slogan, Make America Great Again.
It is getting so that folks need an acronym reference resource (ARR) at their fingertips just to understand a contemporary news report.
All joking aside, the seniors of California just received a brief little notice in their mailbox titled “Pickle Amendment; Important Notice Regarding Your Medi-Cal Eligibility.” The brief little letter appears in just about every language known to man so it takes three pages of about ten-point type to deliver.
First of all, many of us new to California have no idea what the phrase Medi-Cal means. We looked it up in our ARR. It is a reference to California’s Medicaid program designed to help low-income families, seniors, people with disabilities, foster care children, pregnant women and “childless adults with incomes below 138 percent of the federal poverty level.”
The definition of federal poverty level is almost a book in itself. It varies by state. When you study those guidelines it seems that a person needs to be really impoverished to qualify for assistance. In my case, since I receive monthly Social Security payments and a pension through my former employer, I find that studying this complicated notice is a complete waste of time. For the point I am making in this story, however, I followed through.
The letter reads: “If you are aged, blind or disabled you may be eligible for Medi-Cal benefits without a share of cost if you qualify under the Pickle Amendment.” Right away we must ask, what in hell is the Pickle Amendment? A government resource website reveals that:
“The Pickle Amendment (Section 503 of P.L. 94-566), provides continued medical assistance to individuals who are terminated from financial assistance under the OAA, APTD, or ANB programs, due to excess income.”
Got that?
Let’s pick that opening sentence apart, using our handy ARR. The OAA can be an acronym for Old Age Assistance, Older Americans Act, Office of Academic Affiliations (Department of Veterans Affairs), and Organization of Africans in the Americas. Take your pick. We have to assume one of the first two definitions apply here.
So what is APTD? That was relatively easy. It means Aid to the Permanently and Totally Disabled.
The meaning of "ANB program" is a mystery. A list of 25 definitions via Google range from American National Bank to Alaska Native Brotherhood and a rock band named Agoraphobic Nosebleed. Two more interesting interpretations that may apply are Assault N Battery and Argument from Nonbelief (theistic debate.) Have fun figuring that one out.
Moving on to the second sentence in paragraph one: We are told: “Certain individuals continue to be eligible for Medicaid as long as their combined income and resources, disregarding all SSA increases since they lost SSI, does not exceed the current SSI standard.”
What is SSA? There are over 200 meanings behind this acronym but the best choices are either Social Security Administration or Social Security Act. Thus we must disregard all social security increases “since we lost SSI?” Do we know that we ever lost SSI? What is SSI? There are over 140 meanings behind that acronym but the one we think it applies to is Social Security Income. So then does that sentence make any sense? Think about that for a minute.
And thus we have the government’s explanation of the Pickle Amendment. It has left us totally confused already and we haven’t even started reading the letter.
In the second sentence the letter states that “To qualify, ALL of the following must apply to you.” There follows a list of four things that must apply:
- You currently receive Social Security Title II RSDI benefits. RSDI is an acronym for Retirement and Survivors Disability Insurance. I suspect most seniors receiving monthly Social Security checks qualify for this part.
- You received and were entitled to receive both RSDI and Title XVI, Supplemental Security Income/State Supplementary Payment (SSI/SSP benefits simultaneously in any month since April 1977. (That is such a confusing statement and it involves both state and federal benefit payments. We suspect it means that a person must have been eligible for double assistance payments sometimes during a period following April, 1977. There are well over 100 meanings behind the acronym SSP. We are guessing the correct one is Statutory Sick Pay.)
- You no longer receive SSI/SSP benefits.
- Your countable income and property are within Pickle Amendment limits.