Business Journals
Friday, February 27, 2004

HEALTHY KIDS PROGRAM GETS $1M BOOST FROM PACKARD, CHFE

From the February 27, 2004 print edition
By Troy May

A health insurance program for poor children in Santa Clara County has received more than a $1 million in donations to help insure more kids in fiscal year 2005.

The California Healthcare Foundation and Lucile Packard Children's Hospital at Stanford have given the Healthy Kids program about $1.1 million to cover more kids ages 6 to 18.

"We'll be able to take about a hundred kids off the waiting list," says Leona Butler, CEO of Santa Clara Family Health Plan, which administers the Healthy Kids program.

The program has a waiting list of 700 kids. "It's growing by 100 to 200 every month," Ms. Butler says.

Healthy Kids is an insurance program that's totally supported by local funds and provides coverage to kids in poor working families regardless of their United States citizenship. Other health insurance programs for the poor that are supported by
government funds, such as MediCal and Healthy Families, require members to be U.S. citizens.

Healthy Kids currently provides medical, dental, vision and mental health insurance for 13,000 kids. About 73 percent of the kids in the program live in San Jose, and 84.4 percent are Hispanic, says Ms. Butler. The Family Health Plan also administers the MediCal HMO program in Santa Clara County.

Healthy Kids is funded by Santa Clara County, tobacco settlement funds and private donors including the California HealthCare Foundation, The David and Lucile Packard Foundation, The California Endowment, The Health Trust, Lucile Packard Children's Hospital and El Camino Hospital.

The program has a $14 million annual budget for health insurance that costs $1,083 a year per child.

Those who are eligible include children in families that have incomes about 300 percent above poverty, meaning a family of four makes about $52,000 a year.

This was the first time Packard gave to the Healthy Kids program. The funding was part of a $1 million donation to four health-care organizations in Santa Clara and San Mateo counties.

Other recipients of Packard money were Ravenswood Family Health Center in East Palo Alto, The MayView Community Health Center in Palo Alto and the San Mateo County Children's Health Initiative.

"This program needs financial support from the community to fulfill its promise of providing insurance coverage for all children in our two counties. We hope this gift will encourage others to support this promise, too," Candace Roney, spokeswoman for Lucile Packard, said in an e-mail to the Business Journal.

California HealthCare Foundation has given to Healthy Kids on a regular basis and says it continues to give as it's financially able. El Camino Hospital in Mountain View donated $50,000 to Healthy Kids last year, becoming the first hospital to donate to the program. "They've challenged other hospitals to do the same,"
says Ms. Butler.

Troy May covers health care and health sciences for the Business Journal. Reach him at (408) 299-1820. Troy May covers health care and health sciences for the Business Journal. Reach him at (408) 299-1820.


© 2004 American City Business Journals Inc.

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