I met 16-year-old Lisa DelMauro the other day at Babies and Children's HospitaI in New York City. She was in a wheelchair, wrapped in bandages, having just undergone her 50th operation for a congenital birth defect known as spina bifida.
Still, she was upbeat about her life and her future. Her treatments, she said, had enabled her to continue her schooling and read her favorite Nancy Drew novels.Joshua Lentin, age 6, had a different medical problem but a similar outlook: He was born with a serious heart condition and, after two heart transplants, is thrilled that he can now play roller hockey and dream about a career in the NHL.
These and the other brave children I met - a 19-month-old baby undergoing radiation treatment for abdominal cancer, a high school student who had just endured a painful bone marrow transplant, and a 4-year-old born with health problems brought on by his mother's drug addiction - are among thousands of children treated each day for illnesses and injuries at children's hospitals around our country.
Unlike adult hospitals, children's hospitals specialize in diagnosing and treating children. They train pediatricians who become experts in children's care. They conduct innovative research in the causes and cures for childhood diseases. And they provide millions of dollars in free care to needy children.
Today, the average children's hospital relies on Medicaid for 46 cents out of every dollar it uses to function. This long-standing federal commitment is one important reason that children's hospitals offer the unique and vital services they do.
That is why I am worried about the future of children's hospitals - worried because proposed cuts in Medicaid threaten to compromise the care they give.
These cuts will hurt children's hospitals because Medicaid is the primary source of health-care coverage for nearly one in four children in America - and one in three children under age 3. And contrary to what many people think, more than half of the children covered by Medicaid have parents working at low-wage jobs, not receiving welfare checks.
Medicaid is also the main source of health-care coverage for millions of children like Lisa, Joshua and the others I met in New York who are disabled or who suffer from chronic illnesses - the kinds of illnesses that regular health insurance will not cover and that adult hospitals cannot always treat.
Children's hospitals simply cannot exist without government sup-port.
For more than a decade, I was fortunate enough to serve on the board of Arkansas Children's Hospital, chairing the annual telethon and raising money for a newborn intensive care nursery. Recently, I met a group of generous men and women who give and raise money for some of the largest children's hospitals in our country. While I applaud these private efforts, I know that the generosity of individuals alone cannot fill the gap projected by the proposed $186 billion cut in Medicaid.
Every parent knows from personal experience what it is like when a child is sick. Nothing else in the world matters. Will your son or daughter get better? Is the illness something that will pass, or is it life-threatening? You just want your child to get the treatment she needs.
Sometimes, though, when it comes time to make decisions that affect all of America's children, good parental instincts retreat.
As parents, would we ever say that one of our own children with a serious illness or chronic medical condition did not deserve the best available treatment? Of course not. We would make the sacrifices necessary to help our child get well.
Why, then, as citizens or decisionmakers are we ready to say that only parents who can afford comprehensive insurance will be able to take care of their sick children? What about all the uninsured working parents who care just as much about their kids? What about the poor and low-income parents who, up until now, thought they could at least rely on Medicaid if their kids needed to see a doctor or go to the hospital?
Even if you don't know a soul who has relied on Medicaid for health coverage, and even if your child has never been seriously ill, remember that children's hospitals are there if, heaven forbid, any of our children need them.
Cutting back on our commitment to children's hospitals will not help America's children. It won't help our country, either.