The girl is 11 and has a severe health problem. Her mother is heartbroken for her daughter’s health. (Details are changed to protect their identity.)

The girl goes to school in southern Maine. A staff member at the school is threatening her mom to report her to Child Protective Services due to the horrible condition of the child’s health, which affects her performance and attendance at school. CPS is part of the Department of Health and Human Services, responsible for protecting and providing for everyone’s health – especially low-income people’s health.

DHHS used to cover MaineCare for people of any migration status with federal funds, and then with state funds. They stopped doing that, on our watch, in 2011. The girl was only a baby in 2011, in her home country. But that policy change is affecting everything in her life now.

The girl’s mother wept today when the hospital called to cancel her daughter’s upcoming surgery, which had been scheduled for weeks. This surgery, for only a cost of $15,000-$20,000, was going to bring not just relief of physical pain and educational problems. It was going to bring relief of the threat of state violence against people of Indigenous descent.

But the girl and her mom have something called “Emergency MaineCare” – and apparently the standard of emergency for CPS and education is higher than for the worker in the Medicaid office in Augusta, who stamped “lack of medical necessity” on the child’s paperwork this week.

What can we do? Through hell or high water, we get them that surgery next week, and we pass L.D. 718.

Elizabeth Capone-Newton
interim co-director, Presente! Maine
Peaks Island

Comments are not available on this story.