Wounded and Pregnant, an Aurora Family Without Health Coverage [View all]

[midnight]

When the shooting began, Katie and her unborn son escaped, but a round hit Caleb in the head; he lost an eye and suffered some brain damage. Currently in a medically induced coma, he will remain in intensive care for at least two weeks—and in hospital for much longer. If he recovers, his hospital expenses could come to as much as $2 million, according to CBS News, which broke their story.

Added to that will be the costs of his wife’s pregnancy—unexpected but welcomed by Caleb and Katie as “a blessing”—and the delivery of their baby.

A low-wage retail employee and a student at a technical school, young and working-class. Of course, they have no health insurance. They are the people that Obamacare was designed to help, the people whose troubles are ignored daily in the national media unless they happen to draw attention in a spectacular disaster—and now they are collateral damage in a system that has denied coverage to millions of people in one of the world’s wealthiest countries, while other nations routinely protect all of their citizens.

The president’s health care reforms will be realized too late to help the Medley family, whose future is likely to be ruined, even if Caleb recovers, by the enormous costs they will now incur. Their distress recalls the awful and revealing moment during the Republican primary debate in Tampa, Fla., last September, when members of the “conservative” tea party audience cried “let him die” about a hypothetical young man who falls catastrophically ill without health insurance.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/wounded_and_pregnant_an_aurora_family_without_health_coverage_20120727/