Lawmakers take another stab at children’s health insurance

Washington, DC-Children’s health insurance may be up for discussion as members of the House of Representatives begin work on a new children’s health insurance bill. This new bill will incorporate aspects of the failed HR 976 which would have reauthorized and expanded the popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) known in California as Healthy Families, and would have provided health coverage to children whose families make too much money to be covered by Medi-Cal (California’s Medicaid program), but who cannot afford to purchase insurance on their own and do not receive coverage from their employers.

This comes after a long and arduous process to reauthorize SCHIP, resulting in a bill that went through several rounds of negotiations and proposed coverage for about 3.1 million of the over 9 million uninsured children in the U.S. and that left out many of the reforms needed to improve the current SCHIP program.

This was a step in the right direction; however if Democrats continue to make more compromises in order to garner additional votes, millions more low-income, uninsured children may be left without the comprehensive, seamless, affordable health coverage they need.

According to recently released census data, one in every eight children in the U.S. is uninsured, one in every seven Black children, and one in every four Latino children are uninsured. There are about 800,000 uninsured children in the state of California.

Providing children’s health insurance for poor or moderate income families is extremely popular among voters of both political parties. Studies have shown that SCHIP results in fewer missed days of school and better health status for children. This is what the public and most policymakers want: healthier children receiving treatment in a doctor’s office instead of an emergency room.

SCHIP and Medicaid provide comprehensive preventive health services that children need, with the costs shared by the federal and state government and parents.  Much of the care is offered as a public private partnership through the same managed care plans that families with employer based insurance have, which require that families pay up to $100 per month for coverage. This is fact stands in the face of President Bush and other Republicans’ unfounded claims that expanding these programs is a step towards government run healthcare.

In California, the governor and Democratic leaders of both houses have endorsed comprehensive coverage for all Californians, including good policy to cover all children, but a policy agreement has not been yet reached.

In one of the largest states in the richest country in the world, we are currently failing to ensure basic care for children and their working parents. Our elected officials must hear that it is not acceptable that we now risk moving backwards on children’s health insurance. We cannot afford to take children off of their current health insurance plans and we cannot afford to fail to provide coverage for the nearly 800,000 uninsured children in California and the more than 9 million uninsured children throughout our rich country.