Jack Levine of 4Generations Institute

{sidebar id=1}It's been a while since I sent a direct message advocating a specific issue facing our elected officials, but I feel motivated to send this message to you because of the vital importance I believe children's health plays in every other dimension of their lives.

What is more basic than having access to quality health care and what is more essential than assuring that our youngest ones receive the care they need not only to survive, but to succeed?

There is a great debate about what we can afford as a nation.  I think there should be no question what so ever about whether we can afford a generation of healthy children.  The real question is how do we dare pay the price of unhealthy children - both morally and economically.

As parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts and neighbors, we have the opportunity to make a significant difference in the lives of children.  All our children.

According to Voices for America's Children http://www.voices.org every child in America deserves access to health care.  Of equal importance, health care must be affordable, comprehensive and high quality.  Congress and the President have an obligation to America’s children to renew and expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) as an important step toward meeting the basic yet essential needs of children.

Our nation’s leaders must seize this unique opportunity to make this vital investment in our youngest citizens.  Americans want their elected leaders to find a solution to the disheartening reality that nine million children in the wealthiest nation on Earth are without health care coverage.  Voices for America’s Children urges our leaders to give children a healthy start in life.  Working together, Republicans and Democrats can move the nation forward in improving the health of our nation’s children through the reauthorization of SCHIP.

The policy recommendations presented below are based upon the collective experience of a network of state children advocates who work closely with other policy stakeholders, to improve the lives of children.  As Congress undertakes the effort to reauthorize SCHIP, Voices for America’s Children urges the adoption of the following recommendations:

• The financial stability of SCHIP is critical to states.  Congress has pledged $50 billion in new federal supports to advance the nation’s commitment to improving the lives of children.  This pledge must remain firm. If states continue to face funding shortfalls, they may impose enrollment freezes, increase-cost sharing requirements, and place greater restrictions on eligibility, further increasing the number of kids without health care coverage.
  
  
• The Federal government must give States significant discretion to expand and enhance programs, building upon the successful foundation of SCHIP.  States should be able to expand their programs to provide coverage to more children and to meet the needs of their distinct populations.  A flexible administrative framework should include state options to cover pregnant women through SCHIP without relying on waivers.  States should be able to offer coverage to legal immigrant children and pregnant women who currently are unable to receive coverage until they have lived in the country for five years.  States also should be able to use federal funds, without the need to submit a waiver, to assist families in purchasing or retaining their child’s coverage through the private market.
  
  
• Protect Medicaid and support public programs so that eligible but unenrolled children are able to obtain coverage either through Medicaid or SCHIP.  Currently, seven in ten uninsured children are eligible to enroll in either SCHIP or Medicaid.  Medicaid is the backbone of the country’s commitment to providing health care for low-income children.  With pay-as-you-go federal budget rules in place, Congress needs to ensure that investments in children’s health programs are not secured at the expense of other child services.
  
  
• Eliminate barriers that keep eligible children from gaining or retaining public coverage.  States should be given flexibility to develop their own requirements for establishing citizenship and options to simplify enrollment, renewal and waiting period requirements.
  
  
• Improve the quality of care provided to children to ensure healthy development.  Congress should support state demonstrations that promote best practices and should require states to collect data on core child health quality measures.  Congress should establish a new child health quality initiative that reflects children’s unique health care needs.
  
  
• Establish performance-based measures and reward states that have successfully reduced the number of uninsured children and improved the quality of care.

Dramatic gains have been made in the past decade in covering children.  In fact, SCHIP has been the most successful and efficient of all our country’s health reform efforts.  Yet, the breadth of the health care-coverage gap tells us that much more needs to be done.  The President and Congress must broaden the successful SCHIP program to make sure the remaining nine million uninsured kids get the protection they deserve.  Three in four Americans support an investment in children’s health and elected officials must recognize that their constituents expect the federal government to make this issue a priority.

Working with states, the federal government is the lynch pin that will support efforts to make a significant advancement in addressing the health care needs of our children.  Reauthorization of SCHIP provides Congress with the opportunity to work jointly with the states and communities to improve the lives of our nation’s children.

Timing is critical as the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate are both heavily focused on the health of children in the days ahead.

Please visit the Voices for America's Children site at http://www.voices.org and click to the Speak Up section of the site.....and also, find the state Voices member on the easy to navigate map to learn more about their vital efforts to promote quality health care for children.

Voicing our opinion on critical issues to our elected officials is not only our right, it's our responsibility.  Please join me is making sure your voice is heard to give children the health care they deserve.

As Gabriela Mistral, the Chilean Nobel Prize-winning poet wrote:  "Many things we need can wait.  The child cannot.  Now is the time his bones are formed, his mind developed.  To him we cannot say tomorrow, his name is today."

Please act today.....

FYI....I'm am sending this message from Washington, D.C. where I'm attending the Generations United http://www.gu.org national conference to learn more about ways our communities can bridge the generations for mutual benefit.

Finally, the 2007 Kids Count National Data Book is now released by the  Annie E. Casey Foundation and the nationwide network of Kids Count affiliates....please visit http://www.aecf.org/MajorInitiatives/KIDSCOUNT.aspx for additional information.

Jack Levine, Founder
4Generations Institute
jack.levine@comcast.net This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it (e-mail)
http://www.4GenerationsInstitute.org (web)

This article originally published on July 25, 2007.

Written by :

mkwestmark

 

Comments (0)

You must be logged in to post a comment.