Alternet takes a look at how the proposed health care plans of the Republican and Democratic presidential candidates would translate into the real lives of people living without insurance. Today they look at a Latina mother and her children.

Hernandez is uninsured. She cannot afford to buy a policy in the commercial market even if she could qualify, which she couldn’t. Arkansas Medicaid won’t take her either. She doesn’t fit any of the eligibility categories. Medicaid officials have said that she might qualify under the “medically needy” program, but first she has to spend a large part of her income on medical care. But, she says, she doesn’t have seventy-five dollars to pay for doctors’ visits, even though she needs a check-up and an eye exam. Retinal exams, the standard of care for diabetics, are out of the question. “I can’t see through these glasses,” Hernandez says.

She finds herself in the classic Medicaid dilemma. She needs medical bills to qualify for Medicaid, but has no money to pay doctors in order to accumulate those bills. She has often gone without her medicines — for a thyroid problem and her diabetes — because they are unaffordable. Although a drug company assistance program periodically supplies insulin, the lack of proper, continuing care for her disease is taking its toll.

So will John McCain’s Plan or Barack Obama’s plan serve her better?

Actually neither one.

McCain’s proposals, which embrace a laissez faire health insurance market, would do little for Hernandez and her daughter. His proposed tax credits wouldn’t help them buy insurance, because no health insurer would be crazy enough to assume the cost of their medical bills. Diabetes simply disqualifies them. Nor will McCain’s guaranteed assistance plan be of much help, unless they receive huge federal subsidies to pay for the coverage — something on the order of 100 percent of a policy’s cost. If the subsidies won’t cover the entire cost, which seems likely given the growing federal deficits, it’s hard to see how they could pay the premiums for such a plan.

…if an Obama plan relied on the purchase of coverage from private insurers and did not require them to cover diabetics, they would be as neglected as they’d be under McCain’s proposal. In either case, they would need help paying for the coverage. How much money Congress is willing to spend on subsidies for those with low — even very low — incomes is the great unknown.

Sad no? Guess I should prepare for another four years without insurance.