1. Hawaii: Keiki Care Plan
The Maui Time Weekly published an interesting article by Jacob Shafer on 09/24/09: Hawaii's Keiki Care Program has taken a beating from opponents of government-subsidized health insurance. But was it really a failure?
Our web site has more information about Keiki Care.
2. West Virginia: CHIP Critical Ingredient in Nation's Recipe for Health Care
You want to bake a cake. You mix all of the ingredients together, pour the batter in the pan and place it in the oven. Thirty-some minutes later, you come back to the oven expecting to find a delicious cake. Instead, you find a flat mess. A quick review of ingredients reveals one missing--baking powder, the leavening agent. And without that ingredient, the recipe just doesn't work. Sometimes that's all it takes, one missing piece and the whole thing doesn't work.
That's how we feel about any health-care reform bill without a provision for the Children's Health Insurance Program. Last week, child advocacy groups called attention to the fact that in none of the measures before Congress to overhaul the nation's health-care system is a specific program to replace CHIP. "CHIP has been an enormously successful program, and it's not clear what would replace it," Renate Pore, founder of the West Virginia Healthy Kids and Families Coalition, told the Charleston Gazette last week. "Everybody is very concerned about that."
And there's a reason to be concerned. Consider the fact that about 25,000 children are insured through CHIP in West Virginia. These are children who come from working families, parents who make too much money for their children to receive health-care benefits through Medicaid but make too little to afford traditional insurance premiums. Also consider the fact that more than 96 percent of children in the state of West Virginia have health insurance coverage, through either private insurance, Medicaid or CHIP. That is a ratio to envy across the country. And it shows you that programs like CHIP work.
Sen. Jay Rockefeller has introduced an amendment to the bill before the Senate Finance Committee, at least one of several hundred proposed and one of 45 introduced by Rockefeller himself, that would take CHIP off the chopping block.
Also consider without this amendment, it's not just 25,000 children in West Virginia who could lose CHIP coverage, but 14 million nationwide by 2013. It's not as if these children will go without coverage--most of them could enter into federally funded insurance programs through private companies, that is unless efforts to create public option in the overhaul are successful. And also consider that if whatever system is in place, if these children have coverage less than what CHIP initially offered, it may be up to the states to fill in the gaps. And at this point, who can even estimate what kind of unfunded mandate that would mean to individual states?
"Rather than creating massive dislocation of coverage for 14.1 million children in 2013, the amendment seeks to build upon what works," reads the narrative that accompanies Rockefeller's amendment to restore CHIP. So we have to ask this question--if CHIP works, why chop it? Shouldn't programs like CHIP be a model to health-care reform instead of the scraps on the floor when the system is "fixed?" Walking into an unknown, shouldn't we have some known solutions? It's like baking a cake and just hoping it will turn out, even though you've left out a few ingredients. [Times West Virginian, 09/26/09]
3. Washington: Children Must Come Out of Federal Health Reform Better Off, Not Worse
We in Washington have done better than average in taking care of the health needs of our children. We were among the first states in the nation to pledge to cover every child by 2010. And we have built a coverage program, Apple Health for Kids, that has delivered comprehensive, affordable coverage to thousands of children who otherwise would have relied on the emergency room for their health care needs.
We expect health reform efforts in Washington, D.C., to support our state's laudable goals for children's health care--not work against them. Children must come out of federal health reform better off than they were before, not worse. Our Congressional delegation has a history of standing up for children's health coverage. They stood up for kids when the Children's Health Insurance Program faced reauthorization earlier this year, and we need them to stand up for kids again as health reform bills are amended and the process moves forward.
Every health reform plan to come out of Senate and House committees so far would sunset the highly successful Children's Health Insurance Program, a proven federal-state partnership that is a cornerstone to the comprehensive and affordable children's coverage Washington offers families through Apple Health for Kids. We are greatly concerned about the potential effects of plans to dismantle this program, which has done so much to deliver comprehensive health care to children in our state. As demonstrated in the U.S. Census numbers last week, CHIP is responsible for lowering the children's uninsurance rate in this country--even with the challenge of the recession. And the percentage of insured children in Washington state remained stable, despite sizable losses in employer-sponsored health insurance due to job losses and cut backs.
We have been promised that those who have a health plan they like can keep it; this should be as true for children enrolled in Apple Health for Kids as it is for anyone else. The provisions for children's health insurance in the Baucus Bill are woefully inadequate. They break what works and put in place questionable strategies for covering kids.
We support efforts by Senator Jay Rockefeller to preserve what CHIP allows states like Washington to do in terms of comprehensive benefits, eligibility and affordability by amending the Baucus Bill. We also see potential in the approach taken in the House of Representatives, where an amendment offered by Congresswoman Diana DeGette of Colorado bars moving children into an insurance exchange unless the U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services certifies that the benefits, cost and access to providers is comparable to an average CHIP plan. Another amendment, forwarded by Representative Bobby Scott of Virginia, would ensure that children's benefits in an insurance exchange are comprehensive enough to meet the physical, emotional and developmental needs of children. And, we view inclusion of a "public option" to compete with private insurers as the most promising means of keeping health insurance affordable.
Whatever the mechanisms, Congress must protect children even as members work to put insurance within the reach of their parents. The U.S. Congress and President Obama made a substantial commitment to ensuring the health of our children when they reauthorized the Children's Health Insurance Program earlier this year. And our leaders in Washington state made an equally great commitment to children when they preserved the Apple Health for Kids program in the face of a substantial budget deficit. At this time, our congressional delegation needs to make an equal commitment to protecting children in the health reform debate. [Jon Gould, Seattle PostGlobe, 09/18/09]
|
