Before I even start, I know some people will misunderstand the point I am trying to make. So be it.
I am frustrated. For the third time in consecutive semesters, I have had a student, fearful and upset, approach me. The issue has been the same in each case. During the course of the semester, this student, whose family had been on Medicaid, turned 19.
Once these students turned 19, their Medicaid family coverage was terminated. They were notified by letter. When the students applied for personal coverage under Medicaid, the students were turned down. They were notified by letter.
When this situation happened the first time, I thought perhaps someone somewhere had just failed to check the appropriate box or submit the appropriate form. Now that this exact scenario has occurred three times, I am suspecting a glitch in the law.
Let me deal with an objection some will raise – the accusation that I am a proponent of socialized medicine. I am not. However, ever since Medicare was signed into law in 1965, I have been forced under penalty of the tax code to contribute a portion of my earnings into this program. Medicaid was approved the same year as Medicare.
For nearly 50 years, we have had a nationalized (read “socialized”) portion of our health care system. I am dealing in the reality of this situation – not ideology.
The fact is, we have at best a mixed system – some free market and some socialized. Like the system or not, this system is what we have.
I grind my teeth because children are tangled in a Catch-22 situation. I thought under the Affordable Care Act, parents with private or employer-provided health insurance could carry their children on their health care plans until the children were 26.
If parents with health insurance can carry their children until age 26, then why are children in families covered under Medicaid cut off at age 19? Shouldn’t the federal programs operate under the same mandates as private insurance?
In each case, the three students involved come from economically disadvantaged families. These students are struggling to attend college. They receive minimal help from home.
In the first case, the student has a chronic medical condition and needs medication.
In the second case, the student was afraid of not being able to attend the rest of the semester because East Carolina requires students to have health insurance coverage in order to begin an academic year.
In the third case, and first case under impending implementation of the Affordable Care Act, what financial aid the student receives is now going to be hit with a $600 insurance charge for spring semester. The student told me the $900 usually remaining after paying tuition and fees went to purchase textbooks and supplies. (Yes, that’s right. Textbooks and supplies generally cost a college student from $500 to $900 per semester.)
Now this student is looking at having only $300 for textbooks and supplies.
In each of these cases, the student involved is top-notch. Right now, out of 73 students I teach at ECU, five have earned an A. The student in this third case is one of those five. The other two were A-students, as well.
In all three cases, they are the first in their families to attend a four-year school. They all understand that education is their ticket out of a life of perpetual economic hardship. They are grateful for the opportunities they have.
The last thing these freshmen – late teens adjusting to the rigors and demands of college life – need is yet another obstacle.
Maybe I am missing something. Maybe someone can email me a solution to suggest to these kids. The complexities of the legal morass that surrounds government-funded health care are beyond my knowledge and experience at 63.
How can we expect a 19-year-old to negotiate this labyrinth?
Mike Parker is a columnist for The Free Press. You can reach him at mparker16@suddenlink.net or in care of this newspaper.