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So now I would like to introduce Austin Carrigg

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who is going to tell us about her and her 
5-year-old daughter Melanie.

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(Melanie's not coming)

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So My husband and I met in high school and 
shortly after graduation he joined the Army.

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We were married just days after he came home 
from basic training

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and We started our family young, I'll admit 
that. We have two beautiful boys who are 
now teenagers

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and as the years past, we knew we wanted 
another child and we decided to turn to adoption.

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We have some of the best insurance in the 
country because we have Tricare.

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and so we never stopped to think that we 
couldn't adopt a child with special needs 
because

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our insurance is going to cover everything. 
Fast forward 5 years and in October 2012

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We received a phone call that would forever 
change our lives, on the other end of the 
phone

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was the adoption facilitator calling to tell 
us that our daughter's birth parents chose 
us to be her parents.

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I have never felt the type of joy I felt 
that day,

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she had to tell me to stop crying and to 
call my husband and tell him the good news 
and to book a plane

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to go pick her up. Only 3 days after I brought 
her home

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she was admitted to the hospital where they 
told us she needed cardiac surgery within 
the next week.

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For people who have never had a child with 
a

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severe medical condition, what a lot of people 
don't realize is that you need to meet with 
the financial department of the hospital.

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and they explained to us despite the fact 
that we had tricare we could not get her 
on the policy soon enough.

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they needed a deposit equal to to 1/10th

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of the estimated cost, and they estimated 
that cost to be 1 million dollars. So they 
needed $100,000

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from me in order to do my daughter's heart 
surgery. AND by the way we don't think

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she's going to make it another week. Thanks 
to the ACA my husband was able to go

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down to Medicaid (Social Security)and get 
our daughter placed on a plan and she had 
her open heart surgery.

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and today despite being told she would never 
walk, she'd never talk, not to expect

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much from her she's here running and playing 
and being a 5-year-old

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having a good time and enjoying her life. 
She's saying she's here

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so we all know, "here, here". Over the last 
few months the talk about cutting Medicaid

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and reinstating lifetime caps and allowing 
insurance companies to discriminate against 
those with

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pre-existing conditions, much like my daughter 
has deeply frightened my family. We depend

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on the assistance of Medicaid to take care 
of medical bills that Tricare will not cover

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and together with other families like ours 
we've been walking the halls of the Senate

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and telling our senators and telling our 
representatives this is important to us

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we need to protect our children we need to 
protect Medicaid because there are so many

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families out there just like ours!