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Health Coverage for All Children Campaign
CDF's Health Coverage for All Children Campaign, a national, state, and local initiative to guarantee comprehensive health and mental health coverage for all children and pregnant women in America.
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Christina & Camilla
Christina, 15 and Camilla, 12, New York City: Luminita and Sandor live in Manhattan with their two daughters: Christina, 15, and Camilla, 12. Camilla has cystic fibrosis and requires ongoing health care, including daily medications. Her mother, Luminita, works as an office manager and has health insurance through her employer but cannot afford to pay the premiums for the rest of her family. The father, Sandor, works as a taxi driver, and their combined income is $56,000 annually. Their daughters are enrolled in Child Health Plus B, but because the family's income is just above the eligibility level for subsidized health insurance (currently 250% of the federal poverty level), they must pay a monthly buy-in fee of $150 per child. Although Sandor had colon cancer in the past, he is uninsured because he is ineligible for any public health insurance program, and they cannot afford private health coverage for him.
In 1997 the family moved to Hungary after going there on vacation and discovering they could receive free medical care without any enrollment or approval process. Luminita said that although her daughter, Camilla, is a U.S. citizen, the doctors in Hungary immediately provided her with health care and the medicine she needed. They lived there for four years before returning to the United States. In stark contrast to their experience in Hungary, here their daughters periodically must go without health care because of bureaucratic processing problems that often occur when trying to renew their SCHIP coverage.
Luminita describes how hard it is to tell her children she cannot provide health care for them.
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