Katie Hebert, age 4, is a very sick little girl. She gets severe seizure-like attacks that can last 11 hours from an undiagnosed neuro-developmental disorder. She is deaf in one ear, has a feeding disorder and requires daily medication for asthma. In her
Katie Hebert, age 4, is a very sick little girl. She gets severe seizure-like attacks that can last 11 hours from an undiagnosed neuro-developmental disorder. She is deaf in one ear, has a feeding disorder and requires daily medication for asthma. In her short life, she has been rushed to the emergency room six times and hospitalized twice. Her health was put at even greater risk when she lost her health coverage, which meant no more regular doctor’s visits, weekly therapy or attention from specialists.
To deal with this crisis, Katie’s father tried to buy private insurance, but he couldn’t afford the roughly $1,000 a month, about 30 percent of his salary, to pay for the insurance plan offered by his employer. And even if he could have afforded the insurance, it would not have covered all of Katie’s health needs. On top of that, other private insurers would not accept Katie in their programs because of her pre-existing conditions.
The only alternative was the Texas Children’s Health Insurance Program. But her father made $260 a month above the limit that would enable Katie and her older brother, Nathan, 7, to qualify for CHIP.
Mr. Hebert is a reliable worker who has helped maintain the computers for a banking system in Pasadena, Texas, over the last six years. He requested a voluntary pay cut in an already modest income so his children could get insurance, but his employer didn’t respond. The family eventually spent down its income by paying for unnecessary child care to become financially eligible for CHIP. That wasn’t the end of it, however. When Katie’s father got an automatic 3 percent cost of living raise in December, the family’s income once again exceeded the CHIP limit, this time by $20.54 a month. During the period that her father went through the process of having his wages lowered, Katie was without health coverage–again.
Katie is one of millions of children in working families who face impossible barriers to obtaining health coverage imposed by insurance companies that make enormous profits and pay their CEOs and top managers fat compensation packages. They have the power to decide who gets coverage, what medical treatment they’ll pay for and they set the prices for coverage. The premiums these companies charge and the restrictions they impose are major reasons why 46 million Americans are without health insurance today–including nine million children.
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