1. Hawaii: More Children Now Eligible for Free Health Insurance * Increased QUEST and Medicaid Fee-for-Service Income Levels: Eligible children and youths in households with income up to 300% FPL can now get free public health insurance! Not only did Hawaii eliminate premium payments for children in households between 251-300% FPL, but also the federal government announced its 2008 increased income limits. An updated chart with household size and income levels is now available in the Our Community web site section. * Keiki Care: Great news! HMSA is accepting applications to enroll eligible children and youths in this free health insurance plan. It is a limited benefit package intended for kids ineligible for QUEST. More details, including a chart comparing Keiki Care with the QUEST and Medicaid Fee-for-Service programs, are on our Keiki Care web page. 2. Hawaii: Children's Health Insurance Eligibility Forum Mark your calendars for this special event! Hawaii Covering Kids has invited two national speakers to present information about recent federal policies and their implications for our children's health insurance programs. Topics include CHIP Reauthorization, CMS's August 17 Directive, and CMS's Payment Error Rate Measurement (PERM) program. We will also update participants about the National Covering Kids & Families Network and Hawaii's progress on covering all kids with health insurance. Date: April 16, 2008 Time: 9:30-11:30 am Location: State Capitol Auditorium Travel scholarships for Neighbor Island participants are available. More details will be announced soon--please stay tuned! 3. National: Governors Want Kids Health Insurance Expanded Three Democratic governors told Congress on Tuesday that the Bush administration has made it virtually impossible for them to expand health insurance coverage to more moderate-income children, and they asked lawmakers to intervene. The governors said their states seek to enroll tens of thousands of children in government-subsidized health coverage because their families cannot afford private coverage. However, those efforts were threatened by an August 17 directive from the Bush administration. The directive said states must cover the vast majority of the poorest children already eligible for government coverage--95 percent--before enrolling higher-income children. A few states have gone to court attempting to void it. Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick accused the administration of essentially reneging on its commitment to let the state cover families with incomes up to $52,800 for a family of three. Under the guidelines, the income limit is $44,000 for new enrollees. "Our success depends on the stability and reliability of the commitments the federal government has made to us," Patrick said. "A retreat in any of those commitments could have devastating effects on our progress." Congress has tried unsuccessfully to expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). Last year, lawmakers failed to override two vetoes from President Bush that would have increased federal spending on the program by $35 billion over five years--bringing total spending to $60 billion. The president said the expansion would have encouraged too many families to drop their private coverage so they could get coverage through the government. At the hearing Tuesday, two Republican governors voiced concerns that expanding CHIP to cover more middle-income families would take money from poorer states. For example, Mississippi only covers children living in families with incomes below twice the federal poverty level--$35,200 for a family of three. But even at that conservative level, the formula used to set CHIP payments leaves the state $50 million shy of what Congress originally intended, said Governor Haley Barbour. "I cannot support a bill that shortchanges my state and shortchanges the children of my state," Barbour said. Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue said the South has been particularly successful in covering children through CHIP, but because funding is based partially on the number of uninsured children, states such as Georgia, Mississippi, and North Carolina are penalized. In all, about two dozen states will have to roll back coverage or stop planned expansions, said Rep. John Dingell of Michigan, the Democratic chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee. Congress ended up passing a short-term extension that would let the program continue through March 2009, but Democratic leaders said Tuesday they plan to push for a longer-term reauthorization of CHIP this year. [Kevin Freking, Associated Press, 02/26/08] 4. Arizona: Big Push for Children's Health Insurance Enrollment In Arizona, 250,000 children do not have health insurance. But Thursday, a statewide project aimed to change that. The “Love Your Kids” campaign targeted families of more than 130,000 children who qualify for the state sponsored program KidsCare but haven't enrolled in it. KidsCare provides medical, dental, and vision services to children ages 18 and younger. As one-year-old Cristian Guarista finds comfort with a pacifier, his mom Beatris searches for comfort as she fills out paperwork. "He needs a lot of attention because he's got a lot of medical problems and we can't afford it," she says. Cristian was born premature. His health insurance runs out in a few days. "We don't have any way to pay for them it's very expensive," Beatris says. She's signing up as part of a big push to get kids covered: health insurance for children who don't have it. "There are lots of kids without health insurance," says Penelope Jacks with the Children's Access Alliance. "They think in Pima County there might be 30,000-40,000 without health insurance and at least half of those are eligible for one state program or another." She says the problem is that a lot of people don't know about programs like KidsCare. "It's for those who fall through the cracks and don't qualify for access," says Lilian Jimenez with Kool Smiles, a dental clinic. KidsCare covers vision and dental too. "Children are always going to be sick, always going to have toothaches, and we really want to treat it before it gets worse," Jimenez says. Beatris says she doesn't know what she would do without it. "It will help a lot, because we go to five or six visits a month to different doctors. So he's going through a lot right now." [Ed Tribble, KVOA Tucson, 02/14/08]