 Children
need health insurance in order to receive the health care
necessary to prevent illness, identify developmental issues,
and treat health and dental problems before they worsen.
Yet many low-income working families do not know that their
children are eligible for public health insurance or do
not know how to enroll them. Finding these children, enrolling
them in health insurance, and keeping them enrolled is
key to their health, school readiness, and ability to grow
into healthy adults. Doing so requires us to go where the
children are. Given that most California children live
in two-wage-earner families or with a single parent, that
means looking to child care and early childhood programs.
Significantly, an estimated 170,000 low- and moderate-income
children in child care did not have health insurance
at some point in the past year. It is likely that most
or all of these children would qualify for Healthy Families,
Medi-Cal, or a county health insurance program (in those
counties with programs). With such a large number of
uninsured children in child care, California's child
care settings present valuable opportunities to reach
a significant portion of the state's uninsured children
and help get them covered. Government-subsidized child
care programs in particular, offer the most promising
prospects for public health insurance outreach and enrollment
because they have income eligibility rules similar to
those in publicly-funded health
insurance programs.
This report attempts to build on the inherent child
care-child health insurance connection at a time when
the state's fiscal constraints require us to adopt innovative
and more efficient strategies. Making such a connection
would continue our recent progress in enrolling children
in health insurance and would engage a wider community
of individuals and organizations in the effort.
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