THE UNITED PATIENTS OF AMERICA
Angéla Lorio never thought she would have a friend like Jessica Michot. Lorio is a Republican who once trained to be a nun. Michot is a Democrat who went to school to be a social worker. Lorio watches Fox News; Michot watches MSNBC. Lorio voted for Donald Trump. Michot was for Hillary Clinton all the way.
But the two Louisiana moms, who live just a dozen miles apart, were drawn to each other by a force stronger than politics. They met in 2013, after discovering on Facebook that they had overlapped for months in a Baton Rouge neonatal intensive care unit, praying over tiny beds. Lorio’s son John Paul and Michot’s son Gabriel were born at 27 weeks, which led to severe problems that require them to eat through feeding tubes and breathe through “trachs.” Both boys, now 4, also have developmental delays, and their mothers rely on Medicaid to defray the costs of caring for their sons at home.
Lorio and Michot connected immediately over shared experiences—cleaning trachs, mixing formula, inserting feeding tubes—and they soon launched a group for parents like them. They called it Trach Mommas of Louisiana. “This is the first time I’ve had a very close friend that was on the other end of the [political] spectrum,” says Lorio, 43, who cares for John Paul full-time. “We can look in another mom’s eyes and say, ‘I’ve been there.’ That’s what unites us.”
Now, as Trump and the Republican-controlled Congress work to overhaul America’s health care policy, Lorio and Michot find themselves united for another reason: both moms are committed to stopping the Senate Republicans’ health care plan, which they see as a direct threat to their children’s welfare. Of particular concern is a provision in a Senate draft proposal that would allow insurance companies to impose lifetime caps on benefits, which could make seriously ill patients essentially uninsurable in the private market. Lorio and Michot also oppose a projected 35% reduction over two decades in federal funding for Medicaid, which they fear would force states to eliminate the programs that help parents of disabled children care for their kids at home. “They will be cutting off his life support,” Michot, 33, says of Gabriel. “Without Medicaid, he would either be dead or institutionalized.”
