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Assembly plan would help eliminate cracks
San Francisco Chronicle Op-ed
May 1, 2005
By Wilma Chan
A 4-year-old girl waits in a hospital
emergency room, struggling for breath from an asthma attack.
A teenage boy sits in class, unable to focus
on his teacher's instructions because of the throbbing pain
from an infected tooth.
What do these children have in common beside
their pain? They lack health insurance despite having working
parents who care about their children's health.
Some 779,000 children in California--30,000
in Alameda County alone--are living without health-insurance.
Instead of getting regular checkups from the family doctor,
these children end up making costly visits to emergency rooms,
often bringing with them a medical crisis that could have
been avoided with proper preventive care.
When this happens, we all pay--parents with
lost work time and productivity, children with missed school
days and taxpayers with the cost of the ER visit.
California voters are nearly unanimous in
believing that no child should be without health insurance.
According to a poll recently released by the California Endowment,
9 in 10 voters consider the lack of health insurance for children
to be a serious problem.
The good news is that the problem is solvable.
We can achieve the goal of full insurance coverage for kids.
Nearly 90 percent of California's 10 million children are
already insured through their parents' employers or local
government efforts to cover all kids.
Of the children without insurance, about half
qualify for existing programs, primarily Healthy Families
and Medi-Cal. The remainder could be covered by expanding
access to Healthy Families or through government-private business
partnerships to offer affordable insurance.
What will it take to assure that every child
in this state is insured? First, we need to reach out aggressively
to families who may not realize their children are eligible
for low-cost insurance programs.
To his credit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
has included some funding for this in his proposed budget.
We also need to make those programs easier to enroll in and
to stay in.
A report released last week by the California
Endowment found that the state spent more than $120 million
during a 3-year period to re-enroll children who were dropped
from Medi-Cal because of untimely or incomplete paperwork.
That's $120 million that could go toward providing health
insurance for children who don't already have it.
Second, we need to make sure that every child
in the state has access to affordable health-care options.
This includes expanding eligibility for the state programs
to higher income levels and to currently excluded children
as well as expanding voluntary opportunities for employers
to cover workers' dependents.
Third, we need to coordinate state efforts
with those of local communities. Twenty-eightCalifornia counties
have established or are planning a local Children's Health
Initiative (CHI) to expand health insurance to all children
in their communities (see definitions on page D4).
All of these programs face uncertain financial
futures. Some have had to establish waiting lists or limit
enrollment. Counties are eager to sustain their successful
efforts toward making sure all children have health insurance,
so they are looking to a statewide policy and financing to
enable them to do so.
Finally, we must establish health coverage
for children as a top priority for new state funds. A recent
analysis by the auditing firm of PricewaterhouseCoopers estimated
the additional state costs to cover all uninsured children
at between $119 million and $331 million annually. The California
Endowment poll indicates that voters would support modest
tax increases to achieve this important goal.
To bring these pieces together, I have introduced
AB772. Under this bill, an uninsured family of three with
a household income of $48,270 would be eligible for coverage
for their child or children.
The legislation is co-sponsored by the 100%
Campaign, a joint effort of three leading children's organizations
(Children Now, the Children's Defense Fund, and the Children's
Partnership) and the PICO California Project, a united effort
of 17 California congregation-community organizations representing
350 congregations and 400,000 families across the state.
In a state as resourceful as ours--which has
produced the innovative engine that is Silicon Valley, boasts
the most productive agriculture center in the world and is
home to some of our nation's finest universities--surely we
can become a state in which every child has access to affordable
health insurance.
Assemblywoman Wilma Chan (D-Alameda)
chairs the Assembly Health Committee.
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