In the Blink of an Eye

Amanda's mother sits silently in the hospital waiting room, heart thumping, trying to slow her breathing, praying between breaths. Her Amanda, her sweet, playful seven-year-old daughter, has suffered a major fall, and is in surgery for a traumatic brain injury. This morning she kissed Amanda as she boarded the school bus, and promised to take her shopping for ballet shoes after school. And now Amanda is in a coma, and all her mother Emma can do is pray: please give my daughter back to me. 

Fast forward a month. Emma sits with a social worker outside her daughter's hospital room, trying once more to catch her breath, because in this split second, her world has turned upside down once again. Their insurance will cover Amanda's testing, surgery and care in the ICU. But the little girl who emerged from life-saving surgery cannot walk or talk. Amanda needs several months of intensive in-patient rehabilitation, and many more months of outpatient therapy, to relearn how to walk and talk, to re-master all the activities of a seven-year-old’s life and return to being the happy, capable child she once was. The prognosis is good. But the social worker has just told Emma that their private insurance benefits have run out.

What now? A thousand thoughts race through her head. Sell the house, the car? Both she and her husband already work full-time…Take on second jobs? Will that even cover it? How can they afford the rehabilitation Amanda needs? How can they afford to give their daughter back her life? 

"No, you don't understand--it's okay," the social worker says. "You can go on Medicaid."

In the blink of an eye, a universe can turn upside down for middle-class families like Amanda's, whose lives are about soccer games and ballet classes, who have always been fully insured--but who are forced to live every parent's nightmare...and who reach the limits of their insurance coverage.

Contrary to popular perception, Medicaid does not only cover the poor. It is also a lifeline for middle class Americans.

Perhaps you or someone you know, a neighbor, a relative or a friend, has had a child's life change in the blink of an eye, through a car accident, a brain tumor, diagnosis of a genetic mutation. It is Medicaid that guarantees a house will not have to be sold, savings depleted, a family's financial life turned upside down and forced into bankruptcy, to attempt to pay for the care their child needs.

Contact your Senators. Forward this blog to friends and family in other states, and ask them to contact their Senators too, because we need every voice to be heard. Silence will allow the Senate to get to 50 votes to pass a healthcare bill that will cut Medicaid and hurt children and families.

Do it today. Because no one - including 50 Senators - has the right to play Russian roulette with our children’s health and our family’s lives.