Health care reform and children

By Pippa Abston MD, PhD, FAAP
I’ve noticed you get fewer people complaining about the idea of universal coverage for children, I guess because they’re cuter and we know they can’t get a job to pay for their own healthcare. Believe it or not, there are actually some people who don’t want to pay for the children of “irresponsible” parents. A new form of eugenics?
But most people do care about children. Wait until they hit 18, however, and the compassion starts nose-diving. Folks don’t want to take any chance that they might wind up spending any money on someone who is lazy and just doesn’t deserve help, by whatever criteria they use to determine what “deserve” means.
Of course, I have an ethical problem with even that– but just suppose we take the stand that we DON’T want to help any undeserving adults. Guess who is going to suffer? Not just those adults, but our children!
Children don’t exist in a vaccuum. Providing just for their health insurance is not what they need for optimal health– they need healthy parents and communities. A sick parent may not be able to work enough hours to provide decent housing, food, and clothing. We have heard it said that the schools can’t take on all the responsibility for educating a child and that the parents must pitch in– but what if that parent is ill, works as many hours as she can and then has to crash in bed or on the sofa? How will that parent help educate her child? And even more importantly, a sick parent may not have the emotional resources to provide a child’s primary needs– love, attention and nurturing. Imagine also the emotional burden on the child, having to watch a loved parent suffer needlessly.
The same applies to other community members. A child interacts with so many people during the day– neighbors, church leaders, a schoolbus driver, the lunchroom lady, athletic coaches, etc, etc. We need these people also to give their best efforts to our nation’s children. A bus driver who can’t get health care for his diabetes could go into a coma while driving your child to school and crash.
And then there’s the problem of infection. Any adult who can’t afford care but isn’t at an emergency level of illness will usually NOT go to the ER. So there’s that adult walking around sharing his whooping cough with your infant, who is not old enough to have finished her vaccines. Or swine flu. Or in case of bioterrorism, anthrax, small pox, you name it!
I hope everyone can see from the above how short-sighted it is to exclude any of us from health care. If not for them, for the sake of our children.
Originally posted on Dr. Abston’s blog