Massachusetts Personal Injury Library
Health care for all children-legal issues-Andover-MA
Even as Congress finishes passing additional funding for the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) this month, which extends health cover to approximately four million children, there are still 5-6 million children without any health coverage, and millions more who are underinsured. About six million of the nine million uninsured children who are eligible for SCHIP or children’s Medicaid, are not enrolled because many states have adopted policies and procedures that either block coverage or make it very difficult. Massachusetts attorney Thomas M. Kiley, http://www.tomkileylaw.com, concentrates on children’s health legal issues and wants parents to be aware of this current legislation and proposals for future changes.
The problem is that states set their own benefit packages for the SCHIP program according to The Children’s Defense Fund newsletter, http://www.childrensdefense.org. These states sometimes exclude dental, vision, and mental health services. And in this time of economic recession, there are 26 states who have cut or are considering cutting services to children.
President Obama, Children’s Defense Fund, and many other children’s advocacy groups are pushing lawmakers for health care reform so that all children will have comprehensive affordable health coverage.
Marian Wright Edelman and Richard Kirsch say this new legislation is necessary but is only the beginning to addressing the problems of uninsured children. In an article published in the Huffington Post entitled, "Expanding Health Coverage for Children Bridges way to Health Care for All," they call for comprehensive child health care reform.
They said, "(S)CHIP’s strengths and weaknesses can become guideposts for how to create a sound child health system within overall health care reform that guarantees comprehensive, affordable health coverage to all, including national standards of health benefits that meet each person’s age-appropriate needs. The cost of coverage should be based on family income without financial barriers that discourage people from getting needed care" The article states that the time has come to implement President Obama’s health care reform.
Clayton M. Christensen and Jason Hwang compare the health care plan candidate Barack Obama proposed when he was running for president with the Commonwealth Health Connector health care plan in the state of Massachusetts. The article in Business Week,says one of the primary features of President Obama’s health care plan, http://www.barackobama.com, is the establishment of a National Health Insurance Exchange. This plan has three primary goals: to serve as an unbiased source of information for consumers, to establish minimum standards and monitor performance of participating health plans, and to form a marketplace and increase competition among insurers.
Christensen and Hwang compare this Exchange with Massachusetts Health Connector plan, in place since 2007. One of the important issues is transparency—but that is hard to have since insurers, hospitals, and doctors in the past have been resistant to releasing data that could suggest pricing or quality differences. The authors suggest as long as the information in the Exchange is accurate and people take advantage of it, it can work. In addition, patients need to learn how to shop for health care to make rational purchasing decisions, a skill they’re not used to using in the current health care world.
They suggest that to really change the health care system, we need health savings accounts and personal electronic health records to put more control into the hands of patients who want it. The authors say that we need an abundant range of services in the health care marketplace so consumers with accurate information can make informed decisions, and have a choice of options. And a lesson learned in Massachusetts is that pitting health care providers against each other did not drive down costs, as the Exchange plan proposes.
The article suggests that legislators should learn from Massachusetts’s experience with the exchange model and recognize that disruptive competition be utilized to create a much-needed health care system that is capable of delivering higher quality and performance at a lower cost.
