Since last summer, we’ve been following a handsome little fellow named Matthew. When he was born with a heart problem, his parents quickly learned about caps on insurance. Before he was two years old, Matthew was about to exceed his lifetime coverage limits. His parents were told to consider divorce and welfare, giving Matthew for adoption, moving to another state, and other strategies to work the system to find a way to pay for his health care.
Eventually his dad’s union negotiated their group insurance contract to raise the cap above two million dollars (Matthew was at $1.9M in medical expenses). Matthew’s parents were elated, but they had started on a mission for other families that weren’t so lucky. They pushed their homestate of Nevada to help with back-up protection. The latest news from Matthew’s mom is in: The State of Nevada decided that there would be no help for medically-fragile children like Matthew.
Wanted to drop you a line to let you know the Medicaid “buy in” bill we were trying so hard to get passed… failed on Friday. It’s such a shame that a rich state like Nevada can’t help it’s citizens with healthcare…
This bill would have allowed parents of medically fragile children “buy in” to Medicaid, on a sliding scale based on income. It is actually the Family Opportunity Act, part of the Deficit Reduction Act.
Now, the Family Opportunity Act (part of the DRA) we were trying to get passed would not have been available for our family anyway, because we earn over the income cap, but it would have helped approximately 40 Nevada families (from what I’ve been told.) We were hoping to at least, get that going … and try to expand on that in the future.
Nevada doesn’t have a high risk pool for it’s citizens, either.
What is it going to take???
Terri
The State of Nevada looked straight at children like Matthew and said, in effect, “not our problem.” When do we decide that health care for all children is our problem?
