1. Hawaii Covering Kids on Facebook: Project Updates and Pictures Now you can easily get the 411 about our current initiatives! We created a Facebook page to share pictures, activity updates, and stories. You do NOT have to be a Facebook member to access our web page. Please Note: If you are a Facebook member, please become a Hawaii Covering Kids fan to spread the word among your family and friends about helping kids with health insurance (technology equivalent of the coconut wireless!). 2. Virginia: Ten Reasons Why Kids Need Affordable Health Insurance Last week my mom came to my class (I'm in 5th grade) to discuss the important issue of why children especially should have health insurance. Everyone contributed ideas to the discussion; and their ideas about the problems caused by not having health insurance ranged from doing worse in school, spread of sicknesses, quality of life, and costs of hospitals being so high. Below are ten reasons, (not in order of significance) that we came up with: (well, actually we came up with more...but we didn't want you to drift off.) a. Kameron: Children like to play games--for example, tag and hide-and-go-seek, which are both touching games. This means transmission of germs. b. Shaniah: Sometimes, when parents lose their jobs, their kids lose access to medicine, which they need to survive. c. Max: Children shouldn't be dying from such simple things like teeth or chickenpox. Children with health insurance are most likely to grow up and get a fine education, and then the job they've always wanted. d. Alicia: Not having health insurance can affect the child's education. For instance, let's say recently the child went to the hospital and the bill was very high. The next day, the child comes home from school and needs $10 for a school field trip. The parents cannot afford to pay for the field trip if they wanted to be able to pay the bill from the hospital. e. Zahra: All kids should have health insurance because kids have a weaker immune systems and can have more damage done to their bodies than adults. f. Bakari: Another big reason that kids need health insurance is that if they cannot get vaccinations, then they die or get a disability. g. Jonah: Having no health insurance decreases quality of life because you spend your time in a bed or at a hospital and not able to do the things you want to do. h. Sam: Having disabilities and dying does not give kids a chance to unleash their full potential, which worsens the quality of their life. This affects future society for the worse. i. Devin: Parents should not be paying thousands of dollars because their children need medical attention. j. Karla: Another example why kids should have health insurance is so kids would get the medicines they need. Without this, kids would get sicker and miss days of school, which causes them not to learn much. Not being covered affects so many things in a child's life, and we as a society need to make sure that all kids are able to go to the doctor and receive the coverage they need. [Emma Walsh-Alker and Mr. Parodi's 5th grade class, Washington, DC, 06/04/09] 3. National: Last Piece of the Puzzle--Providing High-Quality, Affordable Health Insurance The nation has made significant progress in covering children, but nine million children still lack insurance and many more are at risk of not receiving the health care services that they need to develop and grow properly. To address these issues, children will need to be an integral part of the much larger health reform debate now underway. This report provides a blueprint of what children and families need from health reform, including an overview of where the remaining gaps are for children's coverage, and recommendations on the key challenges that must be addressed in order to complete the puzzle.