Gerry Emmerich and his wife both work and had health insurance. Hers was through Kaiser, and he had a policy purchased in the marketplace.
When she got pregnant, they qualified as a family for Colorado’s Medicaid expansion. In 2015-2016, the average monthly enrollment for Medicaid in Boulder County was 52,000 people. Nearly 20,000 of them received coverage under the Medicaid expansion.
The couple, who live in Boulder, found out they were having twins. They also learned the twins shared a placenta and had a rare condition called Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome. The complication means that one twin receives too little blood, causing dehydration and potential developmental delays. The other gets too much blood and is in danger of high blood pressure and heart failure. The condition is often fatal to both.
Soon they found themselves going to appointments as often as twice a week at the Anschutz campus of Children’s Hospital in Aurora for ultrasounds.
“We’re two extremely healthy individuals. With our normal insurance, we would have had to pay tons of money,” Emmerich said. “We’re both working people. For a lot of people, it’s shocking when you have an incident like this to see what kind of costs are associated with it.”
Despite the excellent care they received, they lost the pregnancy.
“My wife is pretty much …” Emmerich’s voice trailed off. “It’s something we’ll always be thinking about going forward, probably for the rest of our lives.”
One thing that won’t be weighing on them is potentially bankrupting debt, since the improved coverage they received under Medicaid expansion took care of their bills.
“I don’t think people realize how awful a situation can be … if they don’t experience it themselves,” Emmerich said. “I hope they don’t experience it themselves.”
As the health care debate raged in mid-2017, he likened his family’s experience to people who dislike another country without knowing anything about it.
“Have you ever been there?” he said. “How can you comment on a situation if you’ve never been put in it before?”
