Olive is 2.5 and has private health insurance and a few months ago was approved for TERFA Medicaid. 12 days after she was born we were flown down to ACH where we stayed for 21 days battling encephalitis. 3 days into our stay we received a phone call stating that Blue Cross Blue Shield only covers $5,000 of her $12,000 helicopter ride and how would we like to pay for that? We knew nothing about Medicaid. We were naive and assumed that since our child had insurance that would cover what our daughter needed after we met our deductible. Boy, were we wrong. Since then we’ve had another $12,000 helicopter ride! ACH helped us sign up for Medicaid and we were on AR Kids until we were accepted into TEFRA! Olive was eventually diagnosed with Dystonic Spastic Quadriplegia Cerebral Palsy. Since she was 6 months old she’s received 120 minutes of OT, 180 minutes of PT & 180 minutes of ST from a local CMHS facility per week. We maxed out what BCBS covered in February. On top of helicopter rides & therapy there is also equipment that Olive needs to help her progress. Some of which insurance flat out won’t cover, private or Medicaid. My husband and I have spent thousands of dollars out of our pockets on Olive’s care and we are happy we are able to do so as that’s our responsibility as her parents. But without Medicaid we would have been completely bankrupt after her first 8 months of life. In a perfect world insurance companies would cover what a child needs but that doesn’t happen and when your child has a disability such as Cerebral Palsy, Medicaid becomes a necessity.