Kids rely on Medicaid

Children are the largest single group of recipients in Pa.

As a pediatrician and internal medicine physician at a local community health center in Pittsburgh, I regularly see the faces of Medicaid recipients. They are my patients.

When I take off my stethoscope and head home, I continue to look into the faces of Medicaid recipients. They are my children.

I adopted three children with special needs — some physical, some emotional — which means they require extraordinary care in order to thrive. They came from foster care with serious, complex conditions. You would think that comprehensive private insurance would cover all the care they need and deserve, but it doesn’t.

My family may sound like an unusual case, but the fact is, Medicaid is a children’s program. Of all the groups that benefit from Medicaid in Pennsylvania — people with disabilities, low-income seniors being cared for in nursing homes, vulnerable adults — the largest group by far is children. Forty-three percent of commonwealth Medicaid recipients are children. You cannot cut the Medicaid program without having a deleterious impact on children. And, yes, children are our future.

While Medicaid is the sole health insurance for low-income families, it also serves as secondary insurance for families of all income levels whose children have “medically complex conditions” that require life long specialized health care. Medicaid supports children with cancer, cystic fibrosis, diabetes and autism, among a long list of serious conditions.

With Medicaid funding, children receive ventilators so they breathe, insulin to regulate their blood-sugar levels and behavioral health counseling to help them learn to engage with their families. Medicaid supports kids in school, too, providing additional learning support and therapists.

Thanks to Medicaid, these children receive comprehensive and preventive health care services to keep them healthy and out of the hospital. Without it, many families would face bankruptcy. Or worse, children would suffer and not get the care they need.

The proposed U.S. Senate version of the House’s American Health Care Act has been clear about one thing: Medicaid will be capped and cut. The legislation effectively would transfer all the financial risk to our state government — already running a budget deficit of more than $1 billion — which would be left to its own devices to figure out who gets help and who gets hurt.

Caps and cuts would do nothing to address healthcare cost drivers — epidemics such as Zika or high prices for prescription drugs — they would just make care less available.

Some claim the Senate bill would protect the sickest children by “carving them out” into their own pool for financing, but health care systems don’t work that way. If Medicaid is cut off for many, there will be fewer available doctors, nurses and staff for everyone, weakening the entire system.

We Pennsylvanians should thank Sen. Bob Casey for opposing this legislation. Sen. Pat Toomey, however, supports caps and cuts to Medicaid.

I would ask our senators to meet families, such as mine, who depend on Medicaid before taking such drastic steps. Since it’s difficult for us to take our children to senators’ offices, we are arranging virtual meetings — through Twitter.

At #meetmedicaidpa, you can “meet” Peter, who lost his father when he was 5 and relies on Medicaid for emotional support; Tommy, who relies on Medicaid for therapy so he doesn’t need a feeding tube; Sophia, who needed Medicaid to cover her bone-marrow transplant; and Jacob, who just got a well-baby visit thanks to Medicaid.

For all the faces of Medicaid, we ask Mr. Toomey to change his mind and reject the proposed Senate health care bill. This legislation would make it impossible for our children to get the health care they need.

When you think “Medicaid,” think of the children.