Healthy Families has been a health-saver, if not a life-saver, for my family. I’m self-employed and have to provide my own insurance. Four years ago, my older daughter’s school wanted her put on ADD meds to see if they would help with her learning disabilities. They didn’t help, but she was then marked in the health care system as “high-risk” and became almost impossible for me to insure privately. I was fortunate that my income was low enough that we qualify for Healthy Families; the program accepted her even with her “high-risk” status. Her sister has extremely severe allergies and under private insurance (and Healthy Families) I was having trouble getting her the medications she needed. At one point I was ordering them from Canada and paying for them myself. About 2 years ago she had a particularly bad reaction to something and it made one of her eyes bulge out and blood spots to appear. Finally, at that point, Healthy Families approved her for name brand, state-of-the-art medications and she has been doing well on them ever since. For the first time, her allergies are under control because I’m able to take her to the doctor whenever it gets bad. But she, too, is probably now considered “high-risk” because of this incident. I have my gripes with Healthy Families, specifically its medications policy, but overall it has been a life-saver for this family in Poway, CA. Without Healthy Families, my daughters would have no healthcare coverage. Kids shouldn’t be punished for their pre-existing conditions. All kids deserve to have healthcare!