Kids

by Amy Denney

Created on: February 26, 2008

I am ashamed to say that I do not follow the ins and outs of politics and the government dealings like I should as a citizen of the United States. But I can tell you from personal experience how (SCHIP) has helped my family.

We are a middle class family that works extremely hard. My husband has a good job and works 12 hours days usually 7 days a week. I stay home during the day taking care of my elderly parents and making sure all five of our children have what they need and get to and from school. When he gets home, he takes over the care of my parents and our children, and I go to work. I get home in time to start all over again the next morning at 4:30 a.m. We do not go on vacations, we do not go out to eat and we have to plan our budget very closely every month just to cover rent, utilities, prescriptions for my parents and groceries.

I work as a bartender at night in a small bar in our neighborhood. They, of course, do not provide health insurance at all. My husband works for a large company that does provide health insurance. He is covered by the company and does not have to pay for it. He does have the option to cover the family but by doing so, the premium that he would have to pay out of his check every week would cut our budget so much that we would not be able to cover even our basic needs such as food and clothing.

For the last two years, we have not had any insurance on our children. When they were sick I would have to take them to the emergency room. When this would happen, I would see many other parents there with their children because they did not have insurance. We made too much money to qualify for any State programs and not enough to pay for private insurance.

This was not only a bad situation for me to have to put my children through but it is also bad for all those people that were coming into the emergency room with real emergencies. With all these children waiting to be seen that had the flu or an ear infection, the emergency room was always very crowded. People would have to wait for hours just to be seen. It was really ridiculous and overwhelming not only for the patients but for the medical staff also. What would have been a 30 minute visit for a diagnosis and prescription at a private doctor's office turned into a 4 hour wait at the emergency room. This would also tend to make parents not seek medical care for their children in the early stages of the illness when they may have just had a virus and wait until it was an emergency and their child had pneumonia.

Also, the bill for the emergency room is staggering. I am lucky enough to live in a state where service can not be refused even if you can't pay for it at that time. I have received many bills from our local hospital for $200 - $300 for an emergency room visit just for a sore throat or other such minor ailments.

A few months ago, I had heard about a program in my state called Famis. It provides health insurance for children that fall through that crack of not qualifying for state sponsored programs and not being covered by private insurance. It is associated with the Child Health Bill (SCHIP). I applied and am so relieved to say that we were accepted. My children can now go to the doctors not only for illnesses but also for wellness checks. They can go to the dentist and get the work done that they need. This program is not free for us and we do have to pay deductibles and so forth but it is definitely reasonable and so needed.

I guess what I am trying to say is, children need to see the doctors and go to the dentist. We have the families that qualify for State programs and we have the families that can pay for private insurance. We can not forget about the families that fall in between. These children need these services also.

Whether the Child Health Bill (SCHIP) is aimed at expanding government, I do not know. What I do know is that it does definitely help the children of our nation.

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