Massachusetts Personal Injury Library
More children covered by health insurance andoverma
Massachusetts attorney Thomas M. Kiley, http://www.tomkileylaw.com, concentrates on legal issues around children’s health. President Obama signed the bill that expands healthcare coverage for four million children, according to a story in The Boston Globe. The $33 billion legislation provides government-subsidized insurance coverage to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), adding coverage to four million mostly low-income children.
According to the article, this will reduce the number of uninsured children in America by about half over the next 4 1/2 years and boost the number covered by the program to 11 million. The law is funded primarily by increasing the federal tax on cigarettes by 61 cents, to $1 a pack.
The program, called SCHIP, was created in the 1990s under President Clinton to help families who earned too much to qualify for public assistance through Medicaid but still could not afford insurance for their children. The federal poverty line for a family of four was $21,200 in 2008, while family insurance premiums averaged about $12,680, according to the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured in Washington. Most of the 7 million children enrolled today in SCHIP programs come from families with incomes less than twice that of the poverty line.
The State of Massachusetts already operates under a federal waiver that extends coverage to children in families that qualify, and that has helped the state make sure nearly all children have health insurance. Only about 1.5 percent of children in Massachusetts lack coverage; Massachusetts officials hope to shrink that number to zero in the coming years. Massachusetts will also recoup federal money for insuring children of legal immigrants who have been in the country for less than five years, something the state has paid for itself until now.
The new federal legislation has been supported by leading children’s groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, the Children’s Defense Fund, First Focus, the March of Dimes, and the National Association of Children’s Hospitals.
According to the Children’s Defense Fund, a child advocacy group that also supported this legislation, http://www.childrensdefense.org/helping-americas-children/childrens-health/health-coverage-for-all, there are 9 million uninsured children in America – that’s one in nine. Every 39 seconds, a child is born uninsured. More than 2,200 children are born uninsured every day. Health care costs for working families continue to rise, making it difficult to afford insurance or access timely care. The failing state of the nation’s health care system affects every person in the United States, insured and uninsured alike, according to the CDF. They advocate real health reform that goes even further than the additional funding for SCHIP.
The Children’s Defense Fund has convened hundreds of groups and secured endorsements from almost 1,300 organizations representing more than 60 million people throughout the United States. For comprehensive health care for all children, CDF wants this coverage to include:
* Coverage Must Be Affordable. At a minimum, all states should cover children and pregnant women up to 300 percent of the federal poverty level, with an affordable buy-in based on a family's income for those over that income level.
* Benefits Must Be Comprehensive. Guarantee every child access to all medically necessary services to maximize a child's health and development.
* The System Must Be Simple and Seamless. Coverage must be both simple to understand and apply for and seamless as a family moves and children age. Enrollment must be automatic, in schools, health settings, and through other means unless a parent declines enrollment.
* Pregnant Women Must Have Coverage. Comprehensive prenatal and post-partum health care for pregnant women and new mothers is essential if we are to if we are to reduce the number of low birth weight babies born and the incidence of infant mortality
