What does it mean when CHIP funding stops?

One of many, many egregious things going on right now is the Congressional refusal to fund the CHIP program, which provides healthcare for low-income kids. As I have written about here and elsewhere, I have a personal connection to this issue, as my son and I were on the CHIP-funded state healthcare program in Ohio after he was born. Why? I was in school full-time--working as a graduate teaching assistant and also doing freelance writing and freelance proofreading as well as adjuncting at a second college--and I couldn't find private health insurance that would cover us. I looked into buying coverage through my employer, Ohio State University, and found that that would have cost MORE than my entire paycheck. Private solutions were completely unaffordable, as in I couldn't find one in the "healthcare market" that would cover us both, given the fact that I am female and have a uterus, and health insurance is more expensive for women. In this and so many other instances, the market analogy does not explain healthcare. Healthcare is not a market; there was no free-market product I could buy. Market failure.My kid got great healthcare, along with a few hiccups along the way that I write about in Cover Me: A Health Insurance Memoir. But I'm white, have two graduate degrees, and knew that I was going to escape poverty eventually.Many are not so privileged. For many, CHIP is a necessity given the failure of the healthcare "market." There is no affordable way to keep children healthy that is on offer. None. And so... kids without CHIP will suffer these consequences, beginning as soon as CHIP funding fails, which has already begun.

1. Real human children will go without basic immunizations on their regular schedules. Without these immunizations, we put all children and communities at risk, given the way immunization works to address the health of the "herd."
2. A child without healthcare for a simple cold will have a cold turn into an ear infection or pneumonia that is not addressed until he or she visits an emergency room, at which point the child has a much higher chance of death or hearing damage or a thousand other complications. The parents of the child then also have an ER bill (very expensive) to deal with.
3. Without regular healthcare, the child will not have a regular doctor to help parents make decisions about questions that arise in a child's health: is that bump or rash normal? Chronic and serious issues will go untreated.
4. Untreated illnesses lead to massive stress on an entire family, including more days missed of work, parental stress, pain for the child, threat of a parent losing a job.
5. Untreated illnesses lead to stress on young immune systems, and there are so many advanced autoimmune and chronic, serious conditions that result from stress on immune systems already taxed by poverty and the environmental effects of living in a poor neighborhood which is likely to be more polluted due to environmental racism.
6. Lack of insurance and regular doctors' visits can lead to permanent life effects and disability when specialists are not able to offer timely diagnosis and intervention for learning disabilities and hearing issues among many other challenges.
7. A child who suffers this kind of medical neglect--which is beyond the control of his or her parents--will have experienced more pain and therefore will have an increased potential of a revved up neural system with more chance of encountering chronic pain in the future.

I could go on, and I completely imagine that if you've reached this tiny blog, you already agree with me. But I had to say these things... stopping CHIP funding is not temporary. Every minute this program goes without funding affects real children, and the Republican-induced medical neglect will create a generational impact that these children's bodies will carry far into the future.