TJC Story Blog

Travis Johnson

Mr. and Mrs. Johnson live in Mt. Juliet with their 12-year-old and 14-year-old children. The Johnson family has been self-insured and has used a Christian health sharing company. On August 20th, one of the Johnson children who had been struggling with the isolation of the Covid-19 pandemic and with anxiety experienced a mental health crisis and had to go to the emergency room. Mr. and Mrs. Johnson were very stressed out about their daughter’s health and figuring out health insurance coverage for their daughter was understandably not their top priority. Their daughter was moved from the emergency room to a hospital room to a psychiatric ward and at some point during that time, the family completed financial paperwork. Their daughter was approved for TennCare with an effective date of August 24th, 4 days after she began receiving treatment. The family has received bills from the days she was not covered by TennCare and is having to look into financial aid options and has created a payment plan for those bills. The family is frustrated that with one medical emergency, part of the bills are covered and part of them are not based on the day the TennCare application was actually submitted. The experiences of the Johnson family highlight the importance of retroactive TennCare coverage, because when a family is experiencing a health care crisis, figuring out health coverage should not have to be their top priority.