Photo courtesy Timothy Quinn

JACKSON — Before college, I served as a medic in the military. After starting school, I was able to use the medical training to work in the hospitals as a nursing assistant and worked for various medical staffing agencies in Jackson.

I remember many situations when children would come to the hospital with no insurance and receive care that was influenced by the fact that they weren't insured. One case that I will never forget involved a child coming into the emergency department and being given a splint for a fractured leg,. The patient was supposed to have an emergency follow-up appointment the next day at a pediatric orthopedic clinic to get a cast so the injury could properly heal.

The patient returned to the emergency room two weeks later with the same splint. When the doctor asked the mother was asked why she did not take him to the pediatric orthopedic clinic, she said she did not have the money to pay for the visit. She had postponed it because she was asked to do a lengthy financial-application process for patients with no insurance. The x-ray during the second visit to the emergency room revealed that the bone had healed improperly. The patient now faced dealing with either an improperly healed leg and a potential lifetime limp or having a future surgery that could correct the problem.

The majority of uninsured children in Mississippi qualify for health insurance. Medicaid case workers have informed me that the biggest problem with those children is the fact that a lot of the parents are not completing the applications. A case in my clinic involved an uninsured child that came in with a cold. I treated the child and advised the mom to follow up with the Medicaid office.

Ten days after the visit, my clinic got a call from the local emergency room. The ER nurse informed me that the child was being admitted for pneumonia. They were calling me because the child’s mom listed me as the primary-care doctor. I later learned that the mom did not purchase any of the prescribed medication for the initial upper respiratory tract infection because she couldn't pay for it.

I was confident that this admission to the hospital could have been avoided if the child would have had insurance because the medication would have been covered. The child was granted health insurance while in the hospital due to the social workers filling out the forms with the mother.

Insurance for our children is necessary.