It's been 96 days since the Republican Congress allowed funding to expire for the Children's Health Insurance Program and community health centers. As a reminder, that's something like 36 million people whose care is in jeopardy—9 million kids on CHIP and about 27 million who get health care through community health centers. It's tens of thousands of jobs on the line, too. Anywhere from 76,000 to 160,000 jobs in poor and underserved communities could be lost if the nation's 9,800 health centers are forced to close. Those numbers all come down to individual lives, however, something that seems to have escaped the Republican Congress.
Lives like Dakota Flores' and her kids':
It took years for Dakota Flores to get the correct medications to effectively treat her 13-year-old son's ADHD, but they finally helped turn him from an angry child who was failing in school to a strong student in advanced-placement history and science classes, a member of the honor choir and a bass drummer in an award-winning drum corp.
But now the single mother of four is worried that her son may lose access to those medications, since she purchases his health insurance through the government-subsidized Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP. The program also assists with health insurance for her 11-year-old daughter, who has severe vision problems. […]
Flores is spending her kids' holiday break running them to doctor's appointments and getting their prescriptions filled—and trying to figure out what she will do if CHIP gets cut. Her only option seems to be to quit her $10-an-hour job at a pawn shop in San Antonio, or to decrease her hours, so her children will qualify for Medicaid.
"But then we wouldn't make ends meet, which we barely are now," said Flores, who does not receive any health insurance benefits through her employer. Her own insurance premiums through the Affordable Care Act network are about to skyrocket because she no longer qualifies for assistance. "But that's not my concern; my concern is my kids," she said.
Jam the phone lines of House and Senate Republicans. Call (202) 224-3121, and tell them to stop holding kids hostage and to pass a clean funding bill for CHIP and community health centers.
Believe it or not, she's lucky—her children's health issues aren't life-threatening. It's their quality of life and ability to grow and achieve their full potential. As if they didn't have enough stacked against their futures. But there's also just the mind-numbing stupidity of what Republicans are doing—the party that wants all those "able-bodied" people in full time jobs and not "gaming" the system. Here's a woman contemplating having to cut back her work so that she can get full Medicaid coverage for her kids!
Of course, what Republicans really want is Flores and her children to be cut loose entirely. Because the only people really deserving of help from the government as far as our Republican Congress is concerned are those who can afford to return the favor with campaign donations.