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Mom may have to hunt for referrals
Cutting health plan could leave kids in Michigan vulnerable
LeAnna Dickerson relies on Medicaid to care for daughter Kaytya, 3, who has a rare disease that causes her brain to protrude.
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DETROIT — Cutting back on Medicaid means more than just crossing line items off a ledger. Saving money on government health care can hurt people like LeAnna Dickerson and her daughter, Kaytya.
The 31-year-old Detroit mom relies on Medicaid to pay the bills for care of her 3-year-old daughter, who has a rare disease that causes her brain to protrude from her skull.
Caring for her daughter is a full-time job that doesn’t allow Dickerson to work outside the home. With the help of Sen. Hansen Clarke, D-Detroit, she’s trying to raise $18,000 for surgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital that isn’t covered because it’s not guaranteed to prolong Kaytya’s life.
Recent cutbacks and cost-saving measures, Dickerson said, have made it far more difficult to get the proper equipment and treatment for Kaytya, who is not ambulatory. She is also blind and takes her meals through a tube.
“She has a lot of life-sustaining equipment. She sees a neurologist, a neurosurgeon — 12 doctors altogether,” Dickerson said.
Proposed budget cuts would mean elimination of the children’s special health plan, and put Kaytya on a fee-for-service program that will force her mother to spend hours hunting down health care referrals, Dickerson said.
Dickerson said she also would lose a care coordinator who helps her navigate the tangled medical system.
“I will lose my advocate,” Dickerson said. “I have three kids, and Kaytya requires constant attention. I can’t sit on the phone for hours trying to get doctor’s appointments or find the hospital bed she needs.
“But at least I know a little bit about the system. I have sat there in the waiting room at neurology and watched moms who are new to this get turned away because they don’t have the proper referral slip. They’ll really be lost.”
Janet Olszewski, the state director of Community Health, said people like Dickerson sometimes get caught in the push and pull between state and federal rules. She said the state is working on maintaining care coordinators to help such recipients deal with the system.
The Dickersons are one of 300,000 Michigan families with dependent children on Medicaid. About 77,000 recipients are disabled, like Kaytya.
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