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Ventura County Star
By David Fowble
July 30, 2006
The latest victims of "politics as usual" in
the recently passed state budget are also the littlest.
Despite strong state revenues, a handful of legislators
effectively exercised veto power to eliminate a proposal
by the governor and a majority of legislators to provide
$23 million (0.0175 percent of this year's budget) in
much-needed funding for locally run programs, called
Children's Health Initiatives, that work to provide health
coverage to uninsured children. Legislators also eliminated
a proposal to expand the Healthy Families program to
help provide health insurance to the hundreds of thousands
of uninsured children.
By newspaper accounts, the motivation appeared to be
entirely political. The biggest irony is that the politics
clearly dictate the right thing to do would have been
to increase funding to cover more kids.
Indeed, according to a May survey commissioned by the
United Ways of California, strong majorities of voters
support a plan to provide health insurance for all California
children.
In fact, 83 percent of voters said they favor a proposal
to ensure every child has health insurance. And, when
asked directly about the budget proposal to provide funding
to locally run Children's Health Initiatives, 74 percent
of voters said the state should provide funding.
Yet, despite the obvious political--and social--benefits
of expanding health insurance for kids, the $23 million
for children's health coverage was eliminated from the
final budget.
Politics aside, this decision could have a devastating
real-world impact for our most vulnerable children.
CHIs are collaborations between local healthcare providers
and insurers, the business community, local governments
and community leaders that work to fill the uninsured
gap for children. While the state has stagnated in its
efforts to cover uninsured children, CHIs have stepped
up to plug the health- coverage gap.
Since they began in 2001, CHIs have been responsible
for providing direct health coverage to more than 85,000
children and have helped enroll an additional estimated
80,000 children into public programs like Healthy Families.
Locally, United Way of Ventura County has been working
closely with the county of Ventura, the Ventura County
Community Foundation and more than a dozen community-based
and faith-based organizations in the development of a
Ventura County CHI program.
However, researchers have found that without some consistent
state funding, the long-term solvency of many CHIs is
threatened, thus putting kids at risk of losing their
health insurance. Moreover, due to funding challenges,
CHIs have placed more than 10,000 children on waiting
lists to receive health coverage. That $23 million could
have gone a long way to support the efforts of CHIs to
help get kids off the waiting lists.
Ultimately, California needs to move to a statewide
system that provides insurance to all children. While
our elected leaders missed the opportunity to put money
in the budget for CHIs, there is still time for them
to do the right thing on children's health when they
return in August.
We hope they do.
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