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By Sentinel Staff
Santa Cruz Sentinel
December 9, 2007
The Legislature and the governor have made a laudable effort to reform health care this year. But, with the holidays fast approaching, the "Year of Health Care Reform" will soon be over. If our state leaders want to end this year with a win on health care reform, they need look no further than covering all kids. With broad political support, it is an important piece of health care reform that can easily be accomplished in the remaining weeks of 2007.
Providing all children with health insurance is certainly good public policy on its own merits. Kids with health insurance are more likely to get the care they need to ensure their healthy development through preventive care, immunizations to prevent diseases and regular checkups with primary-care physicians. And, studies have shown that kids with insurance stay healthier, perform better in school and become more productive members of society.
But, covering all kids this year would also be a big political win for all in the continuing effort to expand health coverage to more Californians. It would bring significant momentum to health care reform discussions in the future. Whereas divergent viewpoints have made discussions overall reform inherently complex, broad support for covering all kids makes discussions over providing health insurance to children relatively simple. We know how to do it, we know it's inexpensive, and we know it's successful.
Covering all kids is widely supported across party lines and across constituencies, and is strongly supported by California voters. In fact, a recent poll by the California Endowment found overwhelming support for children's health coverage with 76 percent of voters citing it as their top health care concern. So, it's easy to see how passing a reform this year would clearly help create a positive tone for further health-care negotiations.
Politics aside, if the only thing legislators do this year is cover all children, they will have still made big strides toward overall reform by reducing costs and by protecting the public's health. Children without insurance are in our schools and part of our communities. When they get sick, it puts everybody's health at risk. By providing health insurance to all children, we are protecting the health and future of all Californians.
However, the stakes are high if the Legislature doesn't do anything this year to ensure children have health care. This past spring, Children Now reported that 98 percent of Santa Cruz County's children were covered, leaving about 1,500 uninsured kids. Since that time, however, we've been forced to shrink our local Healthy Kids program as well as institute a waiting list for 6-to-18-year olds due to funding shortfalls. At least 500 Santa Cruz County children have added to the uninsured rolls since the Children Now report. And that number will continue to climb.
In Monterey County, there are approximately 9,000 uninsured children, according to a 2005 UCLA survey.
While Santa Cruz County has had great success putting a Band-aid on the children's health care gap with our local Healthy Kids children's health initiative, that program cannot stay solvent without state funding an expansion program being passed this year. That means that absent a legislative solution to provide a comprehensive plan and funding this year, over 570 children in Santa Cruz County will lose their health insurance by July 2008.
Statewide, if legislators don't take action this year, even more of California's kids are at risk of losing health insurance, and we will lose the gains we have made in reducing the number of uninsured children. We can't afford to move backwards when health and preventive care are so critical to a child's growth and development.
United Way has been working with a coalition of diverse interests for three years to ensure all children have access to health insurance. Business, health care providers and community leaders are among those committed to working hard in the final weeks of 2007 to find a way to cover all children. The governor and the Legislature should join them and commit to getting kids done this year. It's a win that benefits all of us, especially our children.
Martin Chemers is the board chairman for the United Way of Santa Cruz County, and the chairman of the Psychology Department at UC Santa Cruz.Mary Lou Goeke is the executive director of the United Way.
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