- Introduction: To express her distress, Elizabeth Levitt, mother of three children, exclaimed, “You are thrown into this industry you know nothing about. You are so bewildered, so completely anxious. There are periods where you are depressed, and there are times when you cannot believe how much improvement there is.” One of Elizabeth’s children, Bradley, has benign congenital hypotonia, which is a disease that reduces the strength of his motor muscles. Bradley’s disease impacts his effort to walk and use his legs. In addition to her concerns as a mother of three, she is constantly concerned about her son, Bradley, who she has to watch over more carefully and give her undivided attention. At times, Elizabeth Levitt, feels as if she is alone in taking care of her son and assisting him with his disorder. Over the years, Elizabeth has learned that Bradley is enjoying his life, despite his limitations.
- Thesis Statement: Although policies exist to assist with the payments and treatments of children with chronic illnesses, new programs should be made to provide emotional support to these children and their families so that the children never lose hope for their futures.
- Audience: Policy makers or hospitals
- Issues with specific hospitals
- CHOP provides excellent immediate care
- For long term care, the parents are expected to help the children physically and emotionally
- Unfair expectation for young parents
- Importance of Access to Health Insurance Coverage
- Children need to have health insurance to ensure that they are properly cared for such as routine check ups, vaccines, and treating acute and chronic conditions, injury care
- Children with private or public health insure are more likely than children without health insurance to get regular source of health care
- Kids could be able to get health insurance through private coverage or public programs like Medicaid (1966) and children’s health insurance program (1997)
- Adolescents were more likely not to have health insurance or have private coverage compared to young kids
- Youngest age up to five were more likely to be insured and more likely to have public coverage than children between 6-11 and 12-17
- Dangerous for children to lack health insurance especially if they suffer from chronic illnesses
- Improvements for covering the management of a chronic illness
- All plans cover essential benefits
- Large health care plans are not required to cover essential benefits such as asthma or diabetes
- Pay for doctor visits, lab tests, prescription medicines, preventative care, behavioral health services, hospital care, and rehabilitation
- Large health care plans are not required to cover essential benefits such as asthma or diabetes
- Conclusion: Plans include payments, but they fail to acknowledge the emotional stresses that these children and their families endure.
- Source List
- All plans cover essential benefits
Month: March 2018
RCL Post 3: Deliberaton Reflection
During our deliberation, State of Mind, many students expressed the importance of mental health on college campuses. Therefore, throughout this deliberation, we discussed ways to enhance the quality of CAPS at Penn State, to increase knowledge and awareness of mental health disorders, and to extinguish the stigma that surrounds mental health. Working to improve these aspects of mental health would increase students’ understanding of these disorders and would increase the number of college students who receive help from the services provided by Penn State. Since the mental health of students is valued, the community at Penn State must expand its resources and increase the awareness of mental health disorders.
For the first approach, students discussed the benefits of improving the website of CAPS so that more students will know how to schedule appointments and will be able to learn about the services that CAPS provides. In addition, increasing the number of counselors that CAPS employees would decrease the wait time for students to schedule an appointment so that more students are willing to seek assistance. For approach two, students discussed the importance of storytelling for decreasing the stigma around mental health. If students are exposed to other individuals similar to them who have suffered from mental health disorders, they will understand their difficulties with more compassion. Lastly, for approach three, students agreed that educating faculty at Penn State would be beneficial because they interact with students the most. Also, students discussed a required class or section of freshman seminar that would focus on mental health disorders and services so that more students will be educated on this important topic. Through increasing the awareness and knowledge about mental health, students at Penn State would be more willing to seek help and to stand up for the end of the stigma around mental health.