Affordable Care Act Brings Relief to Alaskan Families
By Dr. Monique Karaganis
As a pediatrician, it is my job to understand the needs of parents and their children. Over the years, I have seen hundreds of families of Anchorage come into my office. While each patient is unique the hopes and concerns of their parents are fairly similar. Often times parents’ minds are occupied with their child’s school work, extracurricular activities, and social functions. But the number one concern for many parents I meet is their child’s health.
With a rough economy and the high cost of living in Alaska, it’s no wonder parents are worried about how they will pay for their children’s health care. It pains me to hear about patients whose parents cannot afford to buy their medication or avoid bringing their child to the doctor just because they can’t afford it. However when money is tight and medical bills add up many families are caught in a very tough situation.
Then, two years ago, the Affordable Care Act became law and these parents’ worry transformed into hope for relief. The act prevents insurance companies from denying coverage because of a pre-existing condition and provides free preventative care checkups to children and their families –among numerous other important services. In 2011 33,000 children and 88,000 adults in Alaska have received preventative services from their insurance provider because of the health care act. Additionally, thanks to Affordable Care Act Alaska received over $24 million for community health centers and nearly $7 million to improve community health programs in 2011. For middle class families this bill is a life saver, as it allows parents to breathe easy when it comes to their child’s medical needs.
It is my hope that as we celebrate the anniversary of this Affordable Care Act our state legislators follow in these footsteps and assure complete funding for immunization. Alaska is not only a state that lead the country in at least three vaccine preventable diseases, but we are second in the nation for non vaccinators. We are quickly creating an environment which can lead to an epidemic. Our legislators ought not contribute to that impending disease outbreak by making access to state vaccines more difficult.
In the months leading up to November’s election, too many leaders have focused on refighting the same political fight. Opponents of the act want to repeal it and give control of health care back to the insurance companies. Worse still, there is pressure on the Supreme Court to rule against making health care affordable for children and their families. In doing this, they are systematically ignoring the real benefits the Affordable Care Act will have on future generations of young Alaskans and young Americans.
Today marks the two year anniversary of the Affordable Care Act being signed into law by President Obama, and whether you support the bill or not chances are you will benefit from its consumer protections sometime soon. Politics aside, this bill has given Alaskan families peace of mind when it comes to their children’s medical needs. Day in and day out I see these benefits as patients come into my office seeking the care they need to lead healthy, active lives. I encourage Alaskans to learn more about this important bill and how It will help their families prosper for years to come.
Monique Karaganis, MD, is a board certified pediatrician at Polar Pediatrics in Anchorage. She is also the Secretary for the American Academy of Pediatrics Alaska Chapter and the Chairperson of Pediatrics at Alaska Regional Hospital.
If there was only one thing good out of the Affordable Health Care act, the provision of not being able to refuse ins coverage of a child with pre-exisiting medical is it; I was trapped in a job for a number of years because if we would have lost medical coverage for my first born by merely changing jobs. We also experienced the ins company denying a medical procedure (liver transplant) as they deemed it experimental, even tho’ Medicare had been covering it for a number of years ! Fortunately , the transplant was not needed, the lab that the ins company insisted we use screwed up the test, and the kid was on high doseage of Predinsone for 3 months because they wanted to save $20 in lab work! Obamacare is the first step towards universl coverage in the the US, may I live long enough to see it happen. ( “kid” is now 28 and on Medicare, I breath easier knowing her medical needs are now covered, and that the ins companies are no longer between her and her doctors for treatment.)
I find that those who scream the loudest against Obamacare are those who have never experinced major medical issues, or chronic medical treatment… Lucky them, that they have nothing worse than a bout of the flu or an ear infection… but ask them how would they tell their child or wife that there’s a procedure that would save their life, but they can’t have it because the ins co. won’t pay it.
Thank you, Dr. Karaganis!
“In 2011 33,000 children and 88,000 adults in Alaska have received preventative services from their insurance provider because of the health care act.”
Obama(DOES)care! 🙂
More blog harvesting, this time from Jonathan Chait:
“On the second anniversary of the signing of Affordable Care Act, the bitterness of the health-care fight remains a core fissure in American politics, and the nature of the fissure is clear. The two parties are fighting over whether access to regular medical care ought to be a right or an earned privilege.
To me, and essentially everybody on the liberal side, the answer to that question is obvious. I’m comfortable with the market creating vastly unequal rewards of many kinds. But to make health insurance an earned privilege is to condemn people to physical suffering or even death because they failed to secure a job that gives them health insurance, or they don’t earn enough, or they happened to contract an expensive illness, or a member of their family did. … The principle strikes me as nothing short of barbaric.
[Affordable Care Act protesters] decry the bill for requiring “handouts,” and insist, “you have to work for everything you get.” Which is to say, they consider universal health care exactly like welfare — a giveaway of something that people rightly ought to earn on their own.
Republican politicians … describe the health-care fight as a question of “personal responsibility” — the language of welfare superimposed onto health care.
The root of the problem is that the conservative movement has organized itself around opposition to the redistribution of wealth, and universal health care requires redistribution. Some people will be unable to provide for their own health care, either because they earn unusually low incomes, or because they pose an unusually high actuarial health risk. There are many possible ways to redress this. All of them require, at the most basic level, the provision of resources to the poor and the sick.
And that is something the conservative movement refuses to do.
In every other advanced country, the provision of universal access to medical care is a public responsibility. In every other advanced country, this principle has been accepted by the mainstream conservative party. Only in the United States does the conservative party uphold the operating principle that regular access to doctors and medicine should be denied to large chunks of the population. This sort of barbarism is unique to the American right.”
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/03/barbarism-of-the-health-care-repeal-crusade.html
A sad commentary on what the United States of America has become. I find it hard to feel a sense of patriotism any more, with such large numbers of people supporting the Republican party right wing agenda. Use of the word “barbaric” is not overstating how low we’ve sunk.
I think this quote from AKM’s Elephant in My Uterus post is worth remembering, as it certainly relates to the health care debate.
“No worries if you’re wealthy. You’ll be fine. If not, then you shouldn’t have gotten impregnated in the first place. NO we don’t want to help you out with birth control, and NO we don’t trust your medical decisions. NO, we don’t want you to be on public assistance, and NO we don’t want to provide you with prenatal care, or healthcare for your baby, or food stamps, or welfare or pre-K care. NO, we don’t want to fully fund public schools either. So good luck with the kid. Next time, don’t be so poor and immoral.”
Excellent post Mo. The exasperating thing about right wingers is that they will go to absurd lengths to “protect” a even a few embyonic cells, but care not al all about the child, once he is brought into the world.
We are 2nd in the nation for non-vaccinators?
Oh jeez.
Thank you AKM for posting this and Dr Karaganis for reminding us all about multiple things here in your call to celebrate the ACA.
I realize I have some homework to do on what is happening as regards vaccine issues here.
Oh jeez.
I think the President Obama’s health care reform is a wonderful beginning and I hope that this country will move on to the goal of universal single payor health care. If our friends in France and Denmark can have it, why can’t we? I’m very happy to celebrate today – it was a great beginning. Let’s move onward and upward to reach the goal.
Agreed. It was a great beginning, and most of its provisions have yet to take effect. The asshats who are screaming for it to be repealed are largely in the pocket of for-profit insurance companies, and have great healthcare coverage themselves at taxpayer expense. They should hang their heads in shame, but won’t.
And we already have the template…healthcare for the US Military.
This country provides a lot of ‘socialized medicine’ already. As you point out, the military system, and the Indian Health Care system, medicare and medicaid, and the veteran’s administration. If these were combined, and people that were not already included could buy coverage in that system, we all would have great health care. There are too many exceptions existing now that still leave vulnerable people uncovered. My daughter had to make an ER visit last week for severe abdominal pain, and has no insurance because of a high-risk job. She cannot afford insurance premiums and is now stuck with an ER bill that exceeds $15,000. There is no way she will be able to pay that.
I.H.S. is not socialized medicine. It is part of the compensation paid to Ak.(& other Nat. Amer.) for Westerners stealing their land & natural resources,and doing their best to wipe out the Indigenous populations.It is not “free” medical services from the Gov.The Nat.American’s have been ‘paying’ for it for generations,& continues to pay for it every time the Gov.marginalizes and dismisses the First Nations peoples.I.H.S. is not a charitable gift of largesse from the White culture to the Native culture. It’s a very small attempt at making amends for acts of theft and genocide.