Our Kids Can’t Wait - Meaningful Healthcare Reform Must Include Covering All Kids This Year
We ALL benefit when ALL children have health insurance

Ensuring all kids have comprehensive, reliable coverage is a reform that is long overdue. Our kids can’t wait any longer to get the comprehensive care they need. Even one or two years without healthcare coverage could have life-long implications for a child, as well as a life’s worth of increased costs on the entire system. That’s why any meaningful healthcare reform passed this year must include a plan that ensures every California child has health insurance. Below are just a few of the reasons United Ways of California feels that, if the legislature only accomplishes one thing this year, it should be ensuring that all California children have health coverage:

Covering All Kids Reduces Costs on the System for all Healthcare Consumers – a Key Goal of “Reform”.

• Kids with health insurance are more likely to get the care they need to ensure healthy development, including preventive care, immunizations and basic check-ups – all of which helps identify or prevent problems before they get serious and more costly. In turn, this helps reduce costs on the entire system. For example:
  • Every dollar spent on childhood immunizations will save $13 down the road.(i)
  • Providing health coverage to one California child costs approximately $100 a month. By comparison, the average emergency room visit for children is approximately $435(ii), and uninsured children are nearly eight times less likely than insured children to have a regular source of care. (iii)

Covering All Kids is Among the Voters’ Top Priority for Healthcare Reform:

• A November 2006 poll commissioned by United Way shows overwhelming voter support for covering all kids with 81% of California voters saying they support ensuring that all kids have health insurance.
• The poll also found that two-thirds (67%) of voters think the goal of covering all kids is realistic and doable and a majority believe we can afford it.

Covering All Kids is good for public health

• Public health is affected by ill and untreated children in our communities and schools. With increasing numbers of emerging and reemerging diseases, such as avian flu and tuberculosis, the best way to safeguard everyone’s health is to ensure the health of all children.
  • The health status of previously uninsured California children improved by 25% after being enrolled in Healthy Families for one year.(iv)
  • Only six percent of insured children had a health need that was unmet over the course of a year, as compared to more than 20 percent of uninsured children. (v)

Covering All Kids is good for our economy and working families

• By enrolling children in public insurance, California could gain hundreds of millions in new matching federal dollars that would flow into local economies. These funds create a multiplier effect, generating new jobs, new revenues and stronger local economies.
• Many hard-working families make too much money to qualify for MediCal or Healthy Families, but not enough to pay for health insurance for their children.
  • 71% of uninsured kids are in families where the head of household works full time all year.

We Have a Moral Obligation to Cover ALL Kids – Not Just the Privileged or Select Few

• All children should have a right to health care and healthy lives, not just those who meet certain economic, demographic or other conditions. Just as the public has determined all children have a right to education, there is a moral responsibility to care for the most vulnerable – our children being at the top of the list.
• Countless studies and plain common sense tell us that children with health insurance are healthier, do better in school, and lead better, more productive lives. Health insurance is important to guarantee adequate preventive health care during the critical period of a child’s growth. When health problems go undiagnosed, they can lead to developmental delays and lifelong impairments. (vi)

(i) Centers for Disease Control & Prevention

(ii) T.M Ezzati-Rice, D. Kashihara, S. R. Machlin. Health Care Expenses in the United States, 2000. Rockville (MD): Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality; 2004. MEPS Research Findings #21. AHQR Pub. No. 04-0222.

(iii) American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine. No Health Insurance?: It's Enough to Make You Sick. American College of Physicians-American Society of Internal Medicine, Philadelphia, November 1999.

(iv) Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board, “The Healthy Families Program Health Status Assessment (PedsQLTM) Final Report,” Revised September 2004.

(v) Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, Children’s Health: Why Health Insurance Matters, May 2002.

(vi) M Jhawar, et al. Many Children Remain Uninsured and Not Eligible for Medi-Cal and Healthy Families, UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, December 2004.