Parents of kids with cancer fear GOP budget cuts could slash Medicaid

Tony, an energetic 7-year-old who loves playing football and roughhousing with his brothers wasn’t all that excited when his parents took the family to see Santa in December.

Tony, an energetic 7-year-old who loves playing football and roughhousing with his brothers wasn’t all that excited when his parents took the family to see Santa in December. Instead, he was tired and lethargic.

His parents were surprised because Tony would usually be bouncing off the walls at the prospect of seeing Santa.

Tony had been feeling under the weather for a few weeks, and his pediatrician diagnosed him with a virus and bronchitis. But after the visit to Santa near their home in Wesley Chapel, Florida, Pauline McLaurin says, her mother’s intuition told it was something more serious.

She took her son directly to the emergency room, and her gut instinct was right: Tony had leukemia. From there, things got worse.

Tony has been in and out of the hospital, his body weakened by chemotherapy. Pauline McLaurin quit her job as a fifth-grade teacher to care for him, and they struggle to pay their bills on the salary her husband, Ronnie McLaurin, makes as an electrician.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-care/medicaid-kids-cancer-trump-budget-cuts-rcna199970

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