Letter: Ask leaders to reauthorize CHIP

On Sept. 30, the Children's Health Insurance Program expired, leaving 9 million children without health insurance. This breaks my heart as a medical student working to be a pediatrician and as a person who benefited from CHIP in childhood.

When I was a teenager, I suffered from four collapsed lungs and had to be hospitalized three times in 2008 and 2009. My family was lower-middle class and did not have family health insurance. Only with CHIP were my parents able to pay my medical bills. That experience inspired me to attend medical school to become a pediatrician to provide health care to other kids in need.

Without CHIP, many kids will lose access to the health care they need, or their families will suffer financially from medical bills they cannot pay. Please ask your congressmen and congresswomen to renew CHIP so any kid, regardless of the finances of their parents, can continue to receive health care.

Amanda McLearn-Montz

Medical student, University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine

Iowa City