Healthcare policy blog response and analysis

Health Care Blog:

"Alycia-Care: Peace of Mind…a Sick Child Won't Be Denied Health Coverage"

When Alycia Steinberg found out that her baby girl had cancer, of course as a mother Alycia was very upset and worried for the health and for the life of her daughter Avey. The kind of cancer that little Avey had was also a very serious kind of cancer, leukemia, and so Alycia and her husband worried about two main problems. One, a child that was only two years old, and two, would the insurance company that the family has cover a pre-existing condition?

But because the Obama Administration managed to get the Affordable Care Act through Congress in 2010 -- and now the United States Supreme Court has ruled that the Affordable Care Act is constitutional -- Alycia and her husband can feel safe as far as their daughter's health is concerned because their insurance company cannot deny coverage because or her pre-existing condition.

In order to battle the leukemia, doctors have been giving Avey "intensive chemotherapy" treatments, according to a Blog in the HealthCare.gov website (Salcido, 2012). Avey had some initial setbacks, and what they call "…developmental setbacks" because of the powerful impact that chemotherapy has on a little girl. But her mother said that Avey is "doing amazingly well" in spite of the brutal impact that chemotherapy has on humans. "Her treatment is very expensive," her mother told Dori Salcido, the Acting Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, who wrote this blog.

"My first thought," Alycia remembered, "as I was trying to process the fact that my two-year-old has cancer, was, how am I going to take care of her?"

It's natural that a mother would worry about the health of her young daughter in any event, but once the little girl was diagnosed with leukemia, that surely had a devastating effect on the mom and dad. Later in her life, assuming that little Avey can live through this horrible disease, she will still be eligible for coverage because of the Affordable Care Act. It is a big relief for Alycia, she said in a video that was part of the blog, that the legislation passed through Congress and signed by the president helps her child get the care that she needs.

Her mother described Avey in the video, saying that Avey loves "music, she loves art, she is active and she's been so strong through all of this. She is amazing, amazing, she takes her medicine and goes to the clinic and goes through the procedures without a fuss."

Avey has what is called Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL), which is a rapidly spreading kind of cancer that attacks the white blood cells. The white blood cells are the ones that fight disease (the red blood cells carry oxygen throughout the body), so when the Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia kind of cancer hit the white blood cells in Avey's body, it could have killed the little girl if she had not received the treatments (which are really expensive).

Avey's mother said that by the time Avey finished her chemotherapy, she will have been subjected to this difficult treatment for half of her life! But the treatment, her mother said, is the difference between life and death. "There's nothing more important than that, to make sure your child gets the treatment she needs. The Affordable Care Act has given us tremendous peace of mind knowing that Avey will be able to get the treatment she needs," Alycia said in the video.