So now I would like to introduce Austin Carrigg

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

(Melanie's not coming)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

For people who have never had a child with a

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

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

they needed a deposit equal to to 1/10th

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

families out there just like ours!