Maine’s Senators are to see the latest version of a Republican health care bill Thursday. They’re also due to get a visit from Will and Alicia Ethridge and their three-year-old son Wesley. The Ethridges, from York, plan to urge Senators Collins and King to preserve medicaid.
Will Ethridge says it has helped Wesley on a long-and-difficult medical journey that began days after he was born.
“When he was just six days old, he had his first heart surgery down in Boston Children’s Hospital,” he says. “He had multiple holes in his heart and a narrowed, aortic arch. He actually had to have a second, follow-up surgery less than a month later.”
A year later, more heart problems and, this time, the need for a transplant. Ethridge says medicaid pay for all of it.
“As you can imagine, these are very expensive procedures,” Ethridge says. “And just to be fully-focused on the medical decisions we had to make, without the financial burden was made all the difference for us.”
The most recent version of the health care bill would lead to big reductions in funding. Ethridge says he and his wife will tell the Senators Medicaid saves lives. As proof, they will bring Wesley, who his dad says is now “happy, thriving, three-year-old.”
He will join his mom Alicia and William when they meet Thursday with Senators Susan Collins and Angus King, Congressman Bruce Poliquin and Congresswoman Chellie Pingree.
