SCHIP follies: ‘I felt ashamed that I couldn’t take my son to the doctor right there and then.’

Posted by Linda Gorman in Health Care on Oct 16th, 2007 | no responses

When Ms. Molina’s son came down with the flu she did “the best she could” at the drug store “And as she drove home with her bad full of chest rub and pain reliever and cough medicine, she began to cry.”

So begins the story on a Denver SCHIP poster family. It is headed by Susan Molina. Her angst was described in the Rocky Mountain News on Saturday, October 13, 2007. The article included a photo of her at her kitchen sink while her children, Bernadette 14, and Joseph, 11, gave her “help in the kitchen.”

Ms. Molina reportedly said that “I felt ashamed that I couldn’t just take my son to the doctor right then and there.” “It’s sad that as parents we have to make hard choices—whether to pay a bill or buy groceries or take out children to the doctor. I felt like a failure.”

Ms. Molina doesn’t have to cry or feel ashamed. Like all SCHIP stories, this one keeps readers in the dark about the increasing array of health care options being developed by the private sector. Federally qualified health clinics, and there are a lot of them, will see children for free or a nominal fee. Urgent care centers love cash paying patients. Some offer discount programs with reduced price office visits. For $18 a month and a $5 application fee, Rocky Mountain Urgent care guarantees basic office visits for $65. Follow-ups are $32.50. Visits with procedures are $115. Wal-Mart clinics usually charge less than $65 a visit. Ms. Molina could have seen a physician immediately had she gone to a Wal-Mart drug store with a clinic.

According to the article, Ms. Molina is a property manager who no longer qualifies for the Colorado SCHIP program, CHP+, because her new job “pushed her slightly above $34,344.” And since her job didn’t offer health insurance, her children “returned” to the ranks of the uninsured.

She has testified before Congress and says “Not having the luxury of that security [CHP+ enrollment] is very devastating for any parent. Thankfully, they haven’t had any major things happen where I’d have to rush them to the emergency room.”

The article doesn’t say why Ms. Molina hasn’t bought private insurance for her children. In Colorado’s relatively lightly regulated individual insurance market, health insurance for two healthy children would cost $600 a year with a $5,000 deductible. This is about 2 percent of Ms. Molina’s income. For physician visits she can join an urgent care network, pay cash at any physician’s office, or visit the free federally qualified clinics.

Of course CHP+ would cost Ms. Molina a lot less. Enrollment is $35. There are no monthly payments and copays are a ridiculous $1-$5 for medical care and $3-$15 for urgent and emergency care. No wonder an estimated 60 to 80 percent of people who sign up for SCHIP drop private insurance to do so.

The problem with this story is that it assumes that someone else should pay for Ms. Molina’s children even if that someone is a high school dropout barely making it by on a first job paying $15,000 a year. It says nothing about taxpayer funded alternatives or the fact that there is a growing private effort to provide reasonably priced medical care for people just like her. If the article has its facts right, Ms. Molina can afford health care.

People need to stop telling her that she can’t.