The rush to bring needed change to the nation’s health care system is placing America’s children at grave risk. But almost no one is talking about it. Children have become the silent victims of the debate. More than 30 million children in America receive their health care coverage under the Medicaid program, yet in more than 100,000 articles written about health care reform in the last six months, less than 8 percent mention the impact these cuts will have on our children.
The U. S. Senate’s “Better Care Reconciliation Act of 2017” would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, cutting Medicaid by $772 billion over 10 years. Such cuts would put pressure on states to limit how they pay for children’s health care. It’s a major step backward for more than 30 million children and their families who would be subject to potential limits on their health care. One in every 3 children in the nation is insured by Medicaid. In Illinois, 1.5 million children are insured by Medicaid, which means that almost half of all Illinois children would be adversely impacted. This is a particular challenge in Illinois, where Medicaid reimbursement is the lowest in the nation.
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Precious little time has been devoted to examining the impact that proposed Medicaid cuts will have on children such as 9-year-old Elena, who has already had more surgeries than someone 10 times her age. She was born without an esophagus and with bowel abnormalities, and she requires a ventilator to stay alive. Like millions of American children, Elena is on Medicaid because her family is medically poor. Her mother already wages battles to ensure Medicaid covers her ventilator and at-home treatment. Further cutbacks in Medicaid funding will keep children like Elena in the hospital instead of their homes. Is this better or more efficient care?
Medicaid also insures children like 14-year-old Jonathan and 9-year-old Taniah. They have sickle cell anemia, a blood disorder that causes them chronic pain, and they need specialty care and ongoing infusion therapy. Medicaid also insures children like 6-year-old Jamela, who was a happy, dancing child until she developed debilitating pain and was found to have a brain tumor wrapped around her spinal cord. She needed specialty care, surgery and a year of intense chemotherapy. These diseases are equal opportunity diseases: They hit children of all income levels. Each of us is one catastrophic illness or injury away from needing Medicaid.
But Medicaid is not only for children with catastrophic illness. Even in our primary care clinic at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, four out of every five patients treated count on Medicaid to help pay for their health. These patients include newborn babies, children with multiple ear infections that are very difficult to treat, schoolkids who need their annual immunizations and teens with life-threatening asthma and other very common conditions.
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Given that our country lacks a deliberative process to create a national policy for children — who can’t vote or otherwise participate in the political process — it’s our collective responsibility to safeguard resources and access to health care for children insured by Medicaid.
The Senate bill released last month does more than unwind major parts of the Affordable Care Act. Just like the House version of health care reform, the Senate bill goes far beyond undoing the ACA and undercuts the Medicaid program that has helped save lives and foster healthy futures for hundreds of millions of Americans over the last 50 years. We need to make sure that Congress maintains the overall Medicaid funding levels for children and that any changes protect children with pre-existing conditions. We also need to make sure that children on Medicaid continue to have access to the appropriate preventive, dental, mental health, developmental and specialty services that are now federally mandated by the Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic and Treatment benefit.
[See: How to Be a Good Patient Wingman.]
We implore members of Congress to be cognitive of the impact that proposed changes to Medicaid — the safety net for children in America — will have. We ask them to stand tall and protect both healthy children and sick children like Elena, Jonathan, Taniah and Jamela.
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Where Are Kids When We Talk About Health Care Reform? originally appeared on usnews.com
