This is Obscene

By John Ballard

Head up, Patriots!
Read this and take a close look at how health care is working without reform.
This cobbled-together train-wreck we like to call the world's best medical care not only has few safety nets, the ones we have are full of holes.

Remember as you read that this is a story from the ranks of those without private insurance.
This is how life is lived for the working poor.
Notice how an increase in family income was a contributing factor.

AG: Health plan should have aided boy who died of asthma complications

By Allison Sherry

The Denver Post

The Colorado attorney general's office said Wednesday that a Denver boy who died of complications from his asthma was covered by a health plan that should have paid for the prescription asthma medication he needed.

Zumante Lucero was covered under the Child Health Plan Plus, or CHP, a public health plan for low-income children, according to a letter from the attorney general.

Zumante died in July at age 9 after not receiving Advair, an anti-inflammatory asthma medication, for four months. His mother, Zuton Lucero, repeatedly tried to fill the prescription, but pharmacists said the boy was not eligible for Medicaid.

That was true. While he had been eligible for Medicaid for three years, he was automatically switched to CHP on April 1 after his family's income rose, the attorney general said Wednesday.

It is still unclear whether his mother was notified of the change and why she was not told her son was on CHP when she called to inquire about pharmacy problems.

Zuton Lucero said she called Denver County Human Services every three days to try to get the problem worked out.

In the meantime, she tried to make do with a nebulizer and an inhaler, but Zumante's lungs were getting more inflamed, and he became sicker.

State investigators are probing the death because lawyers representing the Lucero family have threatened to take the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing to court for problems and delays in administering Medicaid and CHP.

One of my grandchildren was covered by Peachcare, Georgia's name for SCHIP, and two more are covered by Medicaid in another state. My mother was a Medicaid beneficiary the last year she lived in a nursing home after the 100 days covered by Medicare ran out. (Years ago my sister and I saw what was coming when my father's nursing home situation alerted us to the possibility of a coming problem, so we took steps to insure that when the time came Mom was officially destitute in order that she would qualify for Medicaid.)

Stories like this make me want to run in the street and scream. How in the name of all that's holy can anyone imagine that health care in America is not in serious need of repair?

I'm not the only professional with a college education sometimes overwhelmed by an avalanche of paperwork cascading from banks, insurance companies and now Social Security, Medicare and supplemental insurance plans.
It's a nutty idea to think the working poor should be able to plow through a similar blizzard of paperwork.
This, Tea Party folks, should never happen in America.