“Medicaid coverage lessened the mental load I carried when I was thinking about how to feed my kids; how to make ends meet.”
When Trista Feist Brown was living paycheck to paycheck as a single mom with two daughters, one thing she didn’t have to worry about was how to pay for health insurance.
The Montana State Legislature expanded healthcare coverage under Medicaid in 2015 and again in 2019 to cover low-income adults. Trista became eligible for coverage under Montana’s current Medicaid program after leaving an abusive relationship in 2016.
When an ocular migraine caused stroke-like symptoms shortly after she left the abusive relationship, Trista was able to get emergency and follow-up care without racking up medical debt or stopping work.
“I was working the whole time. I just wasn’t making a lot of money,” she said. “Medicaid coverage lessened the mental load I carried when I was thinking about how to feed my kids; how to make ends meet.”
Access to behavioral health care has also been an important component to Trista’s journey—and now it’s her chosen career path too.
“I’ve had a few counselors. They helped me so much, not only to get me out, but to change my whole life and change patterns,” she said.
Trista is pursuing a master’s degree in clinical mental health counseling. She is set to begin internships in the summer of 2025 with the ultimate goal of opening a nonprofit crisis center in Plains so the community has a mental health care resource available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
She is also a board member for Clark Fork Valley Hospital in Plains. This volunteer work makes it even more apparent to Trista how important Medicaid coverage is for working Montanans supporting their families.
“These are the contributing members of society from across our state that fall between poverty and middle class. It’s the gray area that gets overlooked a lot,” she said.
This year, Montana lawmakers will decide whether to continue the Montana Medicaid program as it is today.
“If [Montana’s current Medicaid program] doesn’t continue, I fear for all healthcare in Montana, period,” she said. “It’s going be really hard.”
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