The Sacramento Bee
December 19, 2000

Forcing Silicon Valley's wealth to trickle down
Section: EDITORIALS
Page: B7
By Daniel Weintraub

SAN JOSE - Bob Brownstein isn't the first person to observe that the Silicon Valley's economy is like an hourglass - with an affluent entrepreneurial class at the top, a very narrow middle, and a large pool of low-wage working class people on bottom.

But Brownstein, unlike a lot of others, is trying to do something about it.

Brownstein is policy director for Working Partnerships USA, a labor-funded think tank that researches the valley's growing gap between rich and poor and looks for ways to close it.

A coalition he helped piece together has just persuaded Santa Clara County and the city of San Jose to fund a new health insurance program that should guarantee every child in the county has access to health care when they need it. It's believed to be the first such program in the nation.

And like so many Silicon Valley success stories, this one was built from the ground up.

Brownstein's group has long worked with another local coalition - People Acting in Community Together -- that organizes folks through their churches. Talking to working people at their jobs, in their homes, at church, Working Partnerships and PACT concluded that access to health care was probably the most pressing issue facing families struggling to get by in the birthplace of the New Economy.

With rent climbing well past $1,000 a month for a one-bedroom apartment, many families that don't get health insurance through their jobs can't afford to buy it on their own. About 70,000 kids in Santa Clara County are believed to be uninsured. Many of them could get care through existing programs if they knew they were eligible. But at least 20,000 have no options at all.

"The cost of housing is so high that there's just a lot of people who in other places would be doing OK who aren't doing OK here," Brownstein said.

Maritza Calvillo, a San Jose school teacher and co-chairwoman of PACT, heard similar stories. And as a teacher, she knew that the lack of health care could devastate a child's ability to keep up in school.

"This is obviously an issue that was very dear to my heart," she said.

When Brownstein and Calvillo learned that the city and county would be getting millions of dollars from the national legal settlement with the tobacco industry, they saw an opportunity.

"Both of us thought this was an historic chance," Brownstein said.

"The money was like manna from heaven," said Cavillo. "It was money we knew we could do something with and they had no idea what to do with it."

The county, the local agency traditionally responsible for health care, was fairly receptive to the idea. But the San Jose City Council turned them down on a 6-5 vote after an intense and emotional debate. Health care, city officials decided, wasn't their job.

"We were angry," Calvillo said. "We're creating thousands of millionaires a year in the Silicon Valley but we can't provide health insurance for our kids? That was alarming to us."

But they didn't stay angry long. The city left a crack in the door - a task force would study the options for using the tobacco settlement money. The health insurance program would get another shot.

So the advocates went back to work. Between Working Partnerships and PACT, the two groups generated hundreds of volunteers to lobby for the program. They held rallies, sent letters and called local officials. They made sure lawmakers understood that this issue was important to the community. And this fall, first the county and then the city agreed to participate.

The new plan will be administered by a local foundation in tandem with the county's Medi-Cal HMO. They've built in an aggressive outreach element so that anyone already eligible under another government plan will find out and, they hope, enroll. The new plan will be available to families earning as much as three times the poverty level -- about $50,000 a year for a family of four.

The county will spend $3 million from its tobacco litigation settlement and another $2 million from the cigarette tax increase approved by California voters in 1998. The city will kick in at least $750,000. But the government money will pay only a portion of the estimated $14 million annual price tag.

Families that participate will be asked to pay premiums on a sliding scale, up to a maximum of $18 a month. And Brownstein is setting up a fund-raising office to seek money from private foundations and the Valley's corporations.

"We're going to take this issue to the private sector," he said. "The Silicon Valley has the capacity to show that the New Economy can lead with a social conscience and make it a priority to take care of every child."

The Children's Health Initiative has already proven what people can do when they don't wait for elected officials to come up with solutions to their problems. A generous assist from the corporate world would truly make this project a healthy model for the rest of the country.

Daniel Weintraub appears on this page Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. He can be reached at (916) 321-1914 or at dweintraub@sacbee.com.