The Land of Ozz

This is a tough subject for me. I am well above poverty, but I have a child on Medicaid as secondary coverage. We would be very poor if it were not for Medicaid. I post this just to bring light to the fact that Medicaid does not equal poor like many people think. I have planned to post on this subject for a while.
Don Surber After Hours talking about Medicaid prompted me to share a little about my Medicaid experiences. I have many more specifics to share later, but here is the high level story.

My son Caden is now just over one year old and our family would not have survived financially without Medicaid. Today he is still on a feeding tube and sees doctors and/or therapists almost every day of the week. He has had numerous procedures in the past year including a very complex open-heart surgery, abdominal surgery, and in-home nursing care. His conditions related to his primary diagnosis (DiGeorge Syndrome or VCFS) qualifies him for Medicaid. I never thought my family would need Medicaid, but we do. Caden’s hospital bills have totaled nearly a half million dollars in just over a year. He rang up almost fifty thousand on his sixth day of life during the open-heart surgery. I am seeing even more clear signs of how important Medicaid is o our family as I gather information to qualify Caden for another year of coverage.

I am certainly not going to complain if I have to pay a co-payment. I thank God that this program and other programs were there for my family. I know of other families just like us in our local area and in other parts of the country. I wonder where we will shake out in all of this slow-down and cut spending?

See also Medicaid Overhaul in SC.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 29th, 2005 at 9:57 am and is filed under Family, Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.