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that doesn’t have two jobs, that
isn’t going to school, who isn’t trying to better their lives.”
Elise has had no health coverage
since she turned 19, which made
her too old for the Children’s
Health Insurance Program, a federal-state benefit similar to Medicaid. So far, she’s avoided serious
illness, but she feels a gnawing
sense of vulnerability, combined
with the knowledge that any
health problem would be a financial calamity.
“It would be such an ineffable
amount of money that it would
just be like, ‘Well, I can’t pay you,’”
she said.
Elise and her mother have
come to rely on Lone Star Circle
of Care, a network of community
health centers in central Texas that
provides basic medical care and
charges on a sliding scale based on
income. Elise and her mother visit
the network’s clinics for annual
gynecologic exams, they said.
Given the clinic’s mission as a
provider to low-income people
who lack other options, getting
an appointment there sometimes
takes a week, they say. The clinic
is limited in the services it provides, so Dianne has yet to have a
colonoscopy while skipping other
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basic services.
“I have ailments that I would
like to get looked at,” said Dianne.
“I mean, my hip just kills me all
the time.”
In the spring, when Dianne broke
her ankle, the clinic could not help,
so she went to the emergency room
at a local hospital, University Medical Center Brackenridge.
“There are no regular doctors
that’ll see you without you having
to shell out cash,” she said.
That visit resulted in a $2,500 bill.
She has no inkling how she will
pay it.
“I’m a month behind on my cell
phone bill,” Dianne said. “I have
to pick and choose what is worthwhile paying right now, and so I
choose the car payment, the roof
over our head, the electricity, the
water,” she said.
The Medicaid expansion would
relieve families like the Lairds from
having to choose between basic
health care services and electricity. But Gov. Rick Perry has staked
out a strident position against the
expansion, objecting to what he
portrays as the worst dimension of
Obamacare — greater federal involvement in his state.
“Medicaid is a system of inflexible mandates, one-size fits-all
requirements and wasteful, bureaucratic inefficiencies,” Perry
wrote Health and Human Services