Brittany is the mother of two-year-old identical twins Addleigh and Kennedi. She runs a church day care, and gets to work with children throughout the day. However, Brittany’s twins get her extra love and care not only because they are hers, but because they both have medical conditions that cause seizures, muscle weakness, and developmental delays. Neither Brittany nor her husband has health insurance through their jobs, so TennCare has been essential in caring for the twins’ special medical needs. Around the girls’ first birthday, normally a time for celebration, the family was notified that the girls’ TennCare coverage would be discontinued. Brittany was afraid their family might “lose everything that we’d ever worked for.” Brittany appealed the decision and called TJC for help.
TJC client advocates immediately recognized that the twins were still eligible for TennCare in another way. After a phone call from TJC to the Department of Human Services to correct the mistake, the girls’ TennCare was reinstated.
Brittany was overjoyed that her twin girls were safe. As she says, “Addleigh and Kennedi are my greatest blessing.” But she also wanted to ensure that all Tennessee children are protected from similar mistakes and oversights. She worked with TJC to write a letter to TennCare, sharing the twins’ story as well as experiences of other families. In response, TennCare described the new training it has implemented to improve the accuracy of eligibility screens.
In her fight for her twins, Brittany also spoke for many other parents struggling to receive care for their children. She said, “The thought of losing health insurance for my girls was terrifying. TJC helped me solve a problem I had thought was insurmountable, and put my mind at ease.” She continued, “I’m just a mom, and moms do whatever their kids need them to do. I will continue to do what I can to help other families.”
Click here to hear Brittany tell her story in her own voice.
The latest figures show that more than 126,000 Tennessee children age 0-18 are uninsured. For kids whose parents don’t get insurance through their employer (e.g. self-employed, work for a small business, laid off), programs like TennCare and CoverKids can help. But still, many children either do not qualify for or are not enrolled in these programs. Our current health care system, which leaves millions of innocent children without any health insurance, is broken. If children are our greatest resource for the future – we should treat them as such. Let’s invest in America’s success by insuring all children now! Learn more about this issue at the Children’s Defense Fund website.
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