Shut Out on Healthcare After Storm

WASHINGTON — Like most of those whose lives were upended by Hurricane Katrina, 52-year-old school bus driver Emanuel Wilson can thank the federal government for the fact that he has money to pay rent. He's also been given food stamps to make sure he can buy groceries. And if he had young children, the government would almost certainly be helping them get back to school.

But what Wilson needs is chemotherapy, and that is something the government seems unable to help him with. Wilson was being treated with monthly chemo injections for his intestinal cancer before the hurricane.

He has been denied assistance largely because, before the storm, he had what the government says it wants every American to have: health insurance.

The New Orleans man's plight illustrates one of the most perplexing twists in the still-faltering federal effort to help Gulf Coast hurricane victims: a seemingly inconsistent approach to victims' healthcare needs that appears to punish those who had taken the most responsibility for their own care.

Under the present rules for Katrina victims, if you are destitute, the government will pay your medical bills. Ditto if you are severely disabled or have children. But if you're an adult who had a job that included health benefits and you lost that job because of the storm, the government can't seem to help.

That's true even if, as with Wilson, there is every prospect that you can get your old job back as soon as things begin returning to normal.

"I went to Medicaid, and the lady I talked to let me know that Medicaid is mostly if you're disabled or pregnant," said Wilson, who fled New Orleans to Baton Rouge, La. "I don't want to become disabled, and I don't think I can become pregnant, so that leaves me out in the cold."

Wilson can't reinstate his health insurance -- which expires at the end of this month -- because the storm wiped out his job. The government says he doesn't fall into any of the rigid eligibility categories for federally sponsored Medicaid.

He's not alone. Of 6,322 displaced households that had applied for Medicaid through Sept. 23 in Louisiana, more than half, 3,456, were not eligible under current rules, according to the state.

In the Senate, a bipartisan bill would open Medicaid -- the federal program created to serve the needy -- for tens of thousands of displaced people like Wilson for up to 10 months. The Bush administration opposes that, saying it would create a major new entitlement.