Thousands of local children to retain health insurance with passage of Healthy Families funding
The parents of more than 3,500 Humboldt County children just got some very good news.
With a stroke of his pen Tuesday, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger approved bipartisan legislation that will retain health insurance for almost 700,000 California children as a part of the Healthy Families program, which provides low-cost health insurance to the children of the working poor. The program found itself a victim of the state's massive budget deficit and was slated to be gutted, but state legislators on both sides of the aisle banded together to find a number of sources to restore funding for the program at no cost to the state's general fund.
Schwarzenegger's signature Tuesday closed the deal, ensuring that the hundreds of thousands of children who were slated to be disenrolled from the program beginning Oct. 1 will remain insured, at least for the next year and a half.
This came as very good news for Eureka's Keri Meza, who relies on the program to insure her two sons, ages 8 and 5.
'It was a huge relief to see that the program was going to continue,' Meza said, adding that her sons would have gone uninsured if they had been disenrolled from the program. 'That's probably what would have happened -- they wouldn't have had insurance at all. That's a grim reality, but that's what would have happened.'
Established in the late 1990s, the Healthy Families program is designed to provide insurance coverage to the children of parents who make too much to be eligible for Medi-Cal but too little to afford other insurance options for their children. But in July, faced with a $26 billion budget deficit, the state Legislature cut funding for the program by $150 million as a part of a budget deal that included $15 billion in cuts to state programs. Then, Schwarzenegger used his line item veto power to carve another $50 million in funding from the program, essentially leaving it gutted.
In a rare act of bipartisanship, the state's lawmakers banded together earlier this month to find a solution, and a way to keep the children of the state's working poor insured. Assembly Bill 1422, authored by Assembly Speaker Karen Bass, D-Los Angeles, scrapes together $194 million in funding for the program, with $80 million coming from the First Five Commission, $14 million from increases in premiums and co-pays for those enrolled in the program and $100 million from continuing an existing fee on Medi-Cal managed care plans. The plan manages to restore funding for the program without spending a dime out of the state's general fund.
'I am proud that the legislature, health plans and health care advocates were able to come together and agree on an innovative solution to protect the health care of California's most precious resource -- our children,' Schwarzenegger said in a press release after signing the bill.
North Coast Assemblyman Wesley Chesbro, D-Arcata, said he's heard from many parents in his district who were experiencing anxiety over the prospect of their children losing health care, and said he was glad to see Republicans and Democrats, particularly in the Assembly, come together to find a solution.
'At a time when President Obama is working to create universal health care, it's a real victory to be able to bring bipartisan support for at least restoring children's access to care,' Chesbro said. 'And, I think it's a real victory for the working families throughout California.'
North Coast Sen. Patricia Wiggins also applauded the bipartisan effort to restore Healthy Families funding, but reminded readers that other safety-net programs have not fared as well.
'The struggling economy has also had a devastating impact on state and local government budgets, especially with regard to health-related services,' Wiggins said in a statement. 'A.B. 1422 helps bridge the gap by drawing from several sources of revenue but, unfortunately, other programs, and the people who depend on them, will continue to suffer due to budget cutbacks.'
Nonetheless, Meza said she feels like the passage of A.B. 1422 has lifted a great weight off her shoulders.
Meza said insuring her sons through the policy offered through her job at Humboldt Del Norte Foundation for Medical Care is simply cost prohibitive. Without Health Families, she said, her boys wouldn't get immunizations, checkups or dental care. And, in the case of an emergency, like when one of her sons recently fell off his bike and broke a tooth, Meza said she would be stuck with the entire medical bill and, likely, no way to pay it.
'It's very unsettling not having your kids covered,' she said. 'Especially with little kids, you never know what's going to happen. It's just really nice having the peace of mind knowing that they are covered, that if something happens I can take them in.'
The salvaged program will, however, come with a higher cost for its participants.
Susan Buckley, director of the Public Health Branch of the Humboldt County Department of Health and Human Services, said A.B. 1422 increases patient co-pays from $5 to $10 per doctor visit and increases monthly premiums from $24 to $48 a month.
'It is a bit of a burden for families to bear,' Buckley said. 'The spirit of the compromise is that everybody participate in keeping the plan intact.'
While she says restoring funding for the program, even if only for the short term, is 'critical,' Buckley said she worries about the future of the program.
'Of ongoing concern is that this solutions is certainly not a permanent one,' Buckley said, noting that the funding plan will expire Jan. 1, 2011.
Chesbro said he thinks securing ongoing funding for the program is imperative, noting that, next to education, investment in children's health is the most important expenditure the state can make.
But, Chesbro also said he remains hopeful Congress will pass a national health care reform bill that will alleviate the need for Healthy Families.
'One could hope that individual state programs for children would no longer be necessary but, in the meantime, we've got to make sure the state's children are insured,' he said.
