There are three very good reasons why I support a federal health-insurance option, Owen and Braeden and their mother, Tammy. The boys are my twin grandsons. When they were born my son and his wife were students in college. While Daniel worked nearly full-time he was also pursuing a difficult degree in computer science. She was employed as a vet tech. They drove an old battered van with mucho miles that was loaned to them by her family. They lived in a basement apartment with spiders when she became pregnant with twins. Because they were married they were ineligible for coverage under their parents' insurance, and the campus job offered limited coverage. So for prenatal care, due to their qualifications as medically indigent, my son signed up for Medicaid.

My whole life I had been taught by my parents, seared by the Depression, to avoid the government dole as if it were a plague. My mother to her dying day loathed Franklin Delano Roosevelt for taking this nation down the slippery slope to the evils of socialism. Lyndon Johnson was equally disliked because he was responsible for socializing American medicine in the form of Medicare and Medicaid. The nicest thing she could say about people on the welfare handout was that they were drones. In today's caustic rhetoric they would be considered lazy parasites living off the labors of the hard working. In spite of that political heritage and imagery, I was relieved to know my children were eligible for governmental health insurance. They were not lazy nor were they sponging off others. They were poor.

It was not that either set of parents was cheap, uncaring or leeches. We could have subsidized health insurance for them as a family obligation, but frankly it never really dawned on us that paying for this pregnancy was our duty. When two adults elect to marry and start a family, it seemed natural that they would become responsible for their decisions. We gave some money, but what was our obligation to them? While we could afford the monthly premiums they were not cheap even for a well-paid physician father, especially since I was already paying for coverage of my family's health care. Besides, it was not just about money, it was about growing up and becoming responsible adults in the big bad world.

Everything went well until Owen exited the birth canal. As is often the case, the next minutes produced an unpredictable but well-recognized complication. The umbilical cord for Braeden fell into the canal before he did. It is called a prolapsed cord and becomes immediately a medical emergency. If the cord precedes the baby, the blood and its oxygen supply will be cut off and the baby could be irreversibly damaged. There was no time to lose and Tammy and her son were subjected to the crisis of a crash C-section. It is a harrowing experience. Crash is a good word. The scene goes instantaneously from the idyllic birth of new life to surgically ripping the baby from the mother's womb to save it and provide a reasonable future. There followed a long list of expensive medical adventures and misadventures. Braeden was intubated, ventilated and oxygenated. He was X-rayed and IV'd. He was tubed to be fed and MRI'd to figure out his brain. He was treated for bilirubin that was lower than his brother's now at home. He was kept in the newborn intensive care unit for days with the meter running.

The "B" was saved but at an exorbitant cost. After tens and tens and tens of thousands of dollars that his parents couldn't afford, Braeden got to go home. The alternative would have been bankruptcy and abandoning school. Few have that kind of money or that kind of limit on credit cards. The boys and their mother are priceless; for everything else there is Medicaid.

Joseph Cramer, M.D., is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, practicing pediatrician for more than 25 years and an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah. He can be reached at jgcramermd@yahoo.com.