From NBC
Couple gets divorced so they can get medical insurance
It's been dubbed a medical divorce and untold numbers of Americans are doing it. Mostly working families who can't afford their medical bills and don't qualify for government health care.
Talented and talkative 17-year-old Kyla McDonald is now succeeding despite years of struggle with an auto-immune disease, autism and bi-polar disorder.
"I used to be a pretty violent child," admits Kyla.
Medical and mental health bills mounted and Kyla's parents lost their house. But the family still earned too much to qualify for government health care.
"The behavioral health professionals who worked with us advised us we should abandon her at the airport so CPS would take her into custody. We refused to do that we were not going to abandon her," said mom, Cinder McDonald.
Instead Kyla's mom and her stepdad divorced in 2005.
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More on medical divorce here.
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ADDING: Can Children Get Congress To Protect Their Health?
by Marian Wright Edelman, via HuffPo
(...)
On Wednesday, November 4th, the Children's Defense Fund is organizing a Champions for Children's Health Stroller Brigade in the nation's Capitol to send an urgent and clear message to our political leaders that real health reform for children must be enacted this year. Children's unmet health needs have been lost in the debate's "big" issues. Unless we act now, millions of children could be worse, rather than better off, as a result of pending health reform legislation.
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Cross-posted at The Middle of Nowhere.
