The "SOME PEOPLE" Essays
I Spent One Day with a Medically Complex Child and Her Parents by Matt Eich | Edited by Kimberly J. Soenen
(Greensboro and Chapel Hill, North Carolina, August 25, 2018. Photo by Matt Eich.)
2018-2019 held its share of really tough but rewarding commissions. In August of 2018, I spent a day with the Ermantrout-Smith family in North Carolina for a paradigm-shifting magazine article about raising medically complex children.
Moira, the focus of the story, is a few months older than my youngest daughter. Over the course of the day, I observed how, despite her difficult existence, she is the focus of love and energy that radiates from this home.
I managed to maintain my composure during the job, but after returning home I broke down and cried like a baby, my heart breaking for what this family has already been through and has yet to face.
I’m very grateful to the families that are open, and vulnerable enough, to share their struggles with strangers.
“Moira is one of about 400,000 “medically complex” American children—kids who have serious health issues but who, thanks to modern technology, can survive past infancy and even lead long, fulfilling lives. Yet the United States health care system is increasingly failing children like her. Even the best private health insurance doesn’t begin to cover all their care, which can cost an estimated $140,000 per child per year. A 1982 Medicaid fix was supposed to ensure that medically complex children could get essential help at home, but states have quietly eroded those provisions. Kids who used to be eligible for home services are now denied, put on yearslong waiting lists, or forced into plans that do not meet their many needs…It’s easy to guess why states deny care to children like Moira: They don’t want to pay for it. While these kids make up about half of 1 percent of all US children, they account for one-third of children’s health care spending—about $100 billion a year. And Medicaid funding in many states is under threat. Since Medicaid is a federal-state partnership, the total amount a state spends in a given year on it depends in part on federal funding.”
— Melinda Wenner Moyer | Mother Jones Magazine
ABOUT
Matt Eich was born in Richmond, Virginia and is the author of five books of photographs. He creates long-form photographic essays, often connected to themes of memory, family, community, and the American condition. Matt teaches at Corcoran School of the Arts & Design at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., creates commissioned work for a range of clients, and makes books under the imprint Little Oak.PRESS.
ADDITIONAL READING
Six-Year-Old Moira Is One of the Sickest People in America. So Why Is North Carolina Trying to Gut Her Health Care? Kids with complex medical problems were supposed to get the care they need at home—until states began taking away their services. Article by Melinda Wenner Moyer with photos by Matt Eich - Jan/Feb 2019 | Mother Jones Magazine
Learn more about how to join the movement to enact National Improved Medicare for All / Single Payer Nonprivatized Universal Healthcare here.