1. "The Good Life Expo" Outreach Event Thanks to help from our booth partners--CMS, Med-QUEST, and Noridian (Medicare Plan B)--we distributed information about kids health insurance to approximately 5,000 persons attending Hawaii Seniors' Fair from 27-29 September. Next up? A booth with AUW 211 at Sunday's Children and Youth Day Festival. Join us at the State Capitol from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm for games, fun, live performances, and educational activities! 2. Electronic Application Update a. Verizon Foundation will kindly contribute $15,000 to help our e-app become web-based. DevTurtle LLC is currently programming the new simplified application to replace the old blue form and with this additional funding we can make it accessible to the general public via the internet in 2003. b. The California HealthCare Foundation recently reported that almost ten percent of the Healthy Families and Medi-Cal for Children applications in California are being submitted electronically through Health-e-App and the numbers continue to increase. (Note: Health-e-App is similar to Hawaii's e-app design). c. Health-e-App is now licensed for use in Indiana by the Marion County Health and Hospital Corporation to enroll low-income families in public health insurance programs. The pilot project is scheduled to launch in November and represents a first step in rolling out the electronic application to other clinics, hospitals, and community-based organizations. 3. CHIP at the Crossroads: Where Do We Go From Here? How can we continue reducing the number of uninsured kids? Which state programs have been the most successful, and why? Can we cover more parents without compromising kids' coverage? Is there tension between states that have used most of their federal CHIP funds, versus those that have large amounts unspent? These questions were addressed at a briefing sponsored by the Alliance for Health Reform, with support from The American Academy of Family Physicians. Panelists included Tom Scully, administrator, Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services; Cindy Mann, Institute for Health Care Research and Policy; Edwin Park, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities; and Jana Thomas, PeachCare for Kids Georgia Department of Community Health. Senator Jay Rockefeller, Alliance chairman, moderated the discussion. 4. Five Things Everyone Should Know about the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) Published on 10/01/02, this research paper examines CHIP on its five-year anniversary. Over two-thirds of states expanded income eligibility to at least 200 percent of poverty, 35 states created separate programs, and states invested unprecedented resources in outreach and streamlined enrollment procedures. CHIP and Medicaid could cover 84 percent of low-income uninsured children. Following CHIP, uninsurance has been reduced from 23.3 percent to 17.5 percent for children with incomes between 100 and 200 percent of poverty. For poor children, the uninsurance rate stagnated at 27 percent. Some challenges lie ahead for the program. CHIP funds have been plentiful to date, but may run short over the next several years. Closing the remaining coverage gaps for children will require a number of Medicaid and CHIP policy changes, including increasing enrollment efforts and extending eligibility to immigrant children. 5. Highlights from The Urban Institute's CHIP Evaluation This slide show summarizes research from The Urban Institute's CHIP evaluation. Slides from the quantitative analysis include charts and tables with a short review of what the data shows. Topics covered are Medicaid and CHIP eligibility, equalizing coverage across states, participation rates, knowledge of CHIP and Medicaid rules, why parents don't enroll their children, and trends in uninsurance. The second part reviews how states structured their CHIP programs on outreach, enrollment and retention, benefit package, cost sharing, crowd out, coverage of parents, and children with special health care needs.