On the cutoff's cusp - A national political fight, one middle-class Southern California family . . . What the debate about children's health insurance looks like up close.

But stark reality intruded for a brief moment last summer when 40-year-old Wes Wirkkala tripped, stumbled and almost fell. "Dad, what are you doing? Be careful!" his son Nicholas shouted. "We don't have health insurance."

At 8, Nicholas knows his family cannot risk any visits to the emergency room. He's been told a hundred times, as he dashes out the door with his skateboard, to be careful, to fall on his butt if he has to fall at all because there's no money for broken arms.

Wes Wirkkala, father of three, heard his son's words in front of their Dana Point home and felt shot through with shame. He didn't want this particular family deficiency broadcast through the neighborhood. "It was embarrassing," Wes says. "It kind of makes me feel that I'm not providing everything I should be."

The Wirkkalas, with an income that for five years has hovered around $70,000 and a home they bought in 2004 for $535,000, are a family many would call middle class. But they have been priced out of the private health insurance market, and their circumstances illustrate the core of a political battle over how much a family can earn for their children to qualify for a federal-state partnership called the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. If the outcome of Washington politics goes one way, the children could remain uninsured. If it goes the other way, the children might get health insurance.

Sophia and Wes Wirkkala decided, despite his embarrassment, that they should tell their story of how difficult it can be for a family of modest, middle-class means to maintain health insurance. Sophia is not ashamed, just fearful for her children and angry at a system that has pushed health insurance premiums out of reach.

She lies awake at night, worrying about the health of her three perfectly healthy children. "We're in the boat we're in because I'm a stay-at-home mom," she says. "We chose to have children, and we planned that I would stay home with them and home-school the kids. We want to raise kids that are going to grow up and be great adult citizens. We question that decision all the time. You look at your children sleeping, and you say, 'I'm not providing healthcare for these kids.' "