密歇根新闻广播 弗林特生活用水事件的受害家庭该纳入医疗报销吗?

Flint residents are getting some relief when it comes to their water bills. But what about their medical bills? It's a question some Flint families are asking.

Medical bills are adding up for Keri Webber. I met her over the weekend, volunteering at an open house for Flint residents.

"Already in collection, already in collection," she says, flipping¹ through a stack of bills in the backseat of her white Chrysler minivan. "This one here: $226 paid, but we still owe $242," she says.

That's $242 for one specialist.

The Webbers had Medicare coverage² last year, because of a disability, but still, the bills started adding up last fall. In late August Webber's husband, Mike, had an eye stroke. There's a huge blind spot now in his right eye.

"He went from perfect vision to where his vision is now screwed up," Webber says.

"What can he not do now that he could do before?" I ask.

"Oh, he just can't see," she answers flatly. "It's only one eye, right?"

Webber's smile shows her sarcasm³ here. That said, Webber is happy things didn't turn out worse for her husband.

The day Mike went to the doctor about his eye, Webber says her husband's blood pressure was 225 over 157.

He had taken a small dose of Lopressor for several years, but his blood pressure had never been that high.

His family doctor told him to see a retinal specialist and a cardiologist right away.

"The eye doctors said either he had a blood clot⁴ and it blew in his eye, or what they figure is more likely, his blood pressure got so high he simply popped the artery," Webber said.

It took months to get the bleeding in his eye under control, Webber said, but his high blood pressure is still a problem. He's now taking eight pills a day for it.

Webber didn't tie her husband's sudden health problems to lead until about a month after the eye stroke, in early October, after news about the lead levels in Flint's water came out. They were watching a doctor on the news explain symptoms of lead exposure in adults, Webber said, and the first one this doctor listed was extremely high, uncontrollable blood pressure.

"It clicked," she said. "So the next thing we do, everybody goes in and gets lead tested."

Webber, her husband, and her two daughters all tested positive for lead. One of her daughters had levels that were considered "elevated." A different test of their tap water in December showed lead levels more than eight times higher than the federal limit of 15 parts per billion.

Taken together, Webber says the retinal specialists told her that Mike's eye stroke was likely tied to his lead exposure.

Keri Webber says she was devastated⁵ when she got those results. The bills were never-ending. The eye specialists, the cardiologists, the extensive tests—she says it's tough for the family to pay the bills with a yearly income of a little more than $30,000.

"I thought we were at about $1,200" behind on their medical bills, Webber says, looking again at the stack of bills.

Webber gets quiet, tells me the family is "rocketing towards bankruptcy⁶."

"Looking at this now and knowing these are not all the bills, there's a ton more. My guess is we're sitting somewhere around $7,000. What are you going to do? I'm not going to let me husband die. But do we have that? Hell no," she said.

Like some 30,000 people in Flint, this year, the Webbers are covered under Medicaid.

Earlier this month, the state expanded coverage for another 15,000 people, covering all pregnant women and kids under the age of 21.

"Really this is focused on those high-risk populations that have the potential for greater impact for lead exposure," Chris Priest, Michigan's Medicaid director, said.

Lead can affect anyone who's exposed, but pregnant women and kids are considered at higher risk of health problems. Priest says the state's effort to expand Medicaid coverage to these two groups of people in Flint was "logical."

But the expansion is not going to help people like the Webbers much.

They have Medicaid this year, but they have to pay more than $1,300 out of pocket per person, each and every month before Medicaid will pick up the tab. The Webbers aren't alone. The average monthly "spend-down" for Medicaid coverage in Michigan is about $900, according to Michigan's Department of Health and Human Services.

The expansion won't help the Webbers pay off all the bills they accumulated last year.

Priest and others at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, and even the governor's office, are meeting with people like Keri Webber, to iron out some of these issues. But it's all happening on an individual basis. A spokesman with the governor's office says that's the most appropriate response at this point.

"We have to work with the community to say, what is the degree of that impact?" MDHHS's Chris Priest said.

"Is it attributable to what's going on? And really, what are the needs on the ground? So we're hearing the same things I think that you're hearing. I think the question of how we respond is something we have to do in concert with the local community," he said.

Webber is excited officials are taking the time to meet with her, to understand her budget and her family's situation. But she's cautiously hopeful, because she doesn't want help for only her family.

"They said something about, ‘Well, we're going to work on yours and then see,' and I said, ‘No you're not. No. I don't receive relief until we all get relief,'" Webber said.

Webber is worried about others in this predicament. She doesn't think anyone in Flint, especially those who can document lead exposure, should have to cover associated medical bills. 

"If (my husband) had gotten drunk, got in a wreck⁷, was in a coma⁸. You poison him, and we have to pay for it? That's your issue," she said.

A group has paid for Webber to be in Washington D.C. this week, as Congress hosts hearings on the Flint water crisis. She's taking the opportunity to sit down with national advocacy groups, to discuss her concerns.

1 flipping   

讨厌之极的

参考例句：

• I hate this flipping hotel! 我讨厌这个该死的旅馆！
• Don't go flipping your lid. 别发火。

2 coverage   

n.报导，保险范围，保险额，范围，覆盖

参考例句：

• There's little coverage of foreign news in the newspaper.报纸上几乎没有国外新闻报道。
• This is an insurance policy with extensive coverage.这是一项承保范围广泛的保险。

3 sarcasm   

n.讥讽，讽刺，嘲弄，反话 （adj.sarcastic）

参考例句：

• His sarcasm hurt her feelings.他的讽刺伤害了她的感情。
• She was given to using bitter sarcasm.她惯于用尖酸刻薄语言挖苦人。

4 clot   

n.凝块；v.使凝成块

参考例句：

• Platelets are one of the components required to make blood clot.血小板是血液凝固的必须成分之一。
• The patient's blood refused to clot.病人的血液无法凝结。

5 devastated   

v.彻底破坏( devastate的过去式和过去分词)；摧毁；毁灭；在感情上（精神上、财务上等）压垮adj.毁坏的；极为震惊的

参考例句：

• The bomb devastated much of the old part of the city. 这颗炸弹炸毁了旧城的一大片地方。
• His family is absolutely devastated. 他的一家感到极为震惊。

6 bankruptcy   

n.破产；无偿付能力

参考例句：

• You will have to pull in if you want to escape bankruptcy.如果你想避免破产，就必须节省开支。
• His firm is just on thin ice of bankruptcy.他的商号正面临破产的危险。

7 wreck   

n.失事，遇难；沉船；vt.(船等)失事，遇难

参考例句：

• Weather may have been a factor in the wreck.天气可能是造成这次失事的原因之一。
• No one can wreck the friendship between us.没有人能够破坏我们之间的友谊。

8 coma   

n.昏迷，昏迷状态

参考例句：

• The patient rallied from the coma.病人从昏迷中苏醒过来。
• She went into a coma after swallowing a whole bottle of sleeping pills.她吃了一整瓶安眠药后就昏迷过去了。