This is who pays for your tax-break. (form LA Times)
"For me, as a poor black woman, I don't see anything [Bush] has done," says Barbara Mills, 58, a nurse's aide who is raising her granddaughter and working a job that pays $8.44 an hour. "I have never benefited. All I have done is contribute, like working and paying my taxes. When I need, I get nothing."
Mills needs now. She's not asking for much, just health insurance for 10-year-old Dedra. But getting such assistance in Texas--where advocates for the poor bemoan steep administrative hurdles--so far has been impossible.
Dedra Cheri Mills, who loves to read and loves to dance, most likely has glaucoma. Her glasses cost about $200. Eye drops cost more than $60 a month.
When Mills scraped together enough money to take Dedra to an eye doctor earlier this year, an unusual amount of pressure was found in the girl's eyes. Glaucoma--which can result in blindness--was the initial diagnosis, but the doctor wanted to do a CT scan to make sure there was no underlying problem.
"Then I told her we had no health insurance," Mills says. "She did a series of more tests, but no CT scan. . . . Dedra really needs a good checkup. There could be other things wrong. But where do you go?"
Not to Medicaid, not in Texas. And, so far, not to the federal Children's Health Insurance Program, or CHIP.
Medicaid is federally funded health coverage administered by states to care for America's neediest residents. CHIP was designed to provide cheap, basic health coverage for the children of low-income parents--men and women who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but cannot afford private insurance.
Dedra, so far, has been turned down for both and is still stuck in a bureaucratic maze, by agencies that agree she's eligible for assistance--just not theirs.
Getting coverage a nightmare
When Barbara Mills applied for Medicaid and food stamps on Dedra's behalf several years ago, she was denied coverage, she said, because her income was too high. When she heard about CHIP in May, she raced to sign Dedra up and was just as quickly denied. The reason: Dedra actually qualified for Medicaid.
Mills then signed Dedra up for Medicaid under her unemployed father's name. He never showed up for the appointment with the social worker, and Dedra was denied coverage again. Mills has an appointment this morning to apply for Medicaid for Dedra under her own name. If she is denied again, she can reapply to CHIP.
"All I ask," says a frustrated Mills, "is give me some health insurance."
Dedra Mills' experience highlights the roadblocks that advocates for the poor say Bush constructed--or allowed to stand--that keep people from getting the benefits they deserve.
Texas is one of only three states in the country that has not changed the complicated Medicaid application procedure for children, which includes a face-to-face interview and proof that a family has less than $2,000 in assets. |
