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San Jose
Mercury News RX for kids Taking a major step to help low-income families, Santa Clara County is poised to launch a unique project that will relieve thousands of working parents of a concern that keeps them awake at night: their children's health. On Tuesday the county supervisors are expected to approve the Children's Health Initiative, a plan to make health insurance possible for every child in every family in the county. Santa Clara would become the first county in the country to take this step. Under the proposal, children under age 19 would be covered by one of three health-insurance plans for a full range of services including check-ups, immunizations, dental care, mental health care, vision care, prescription drugs and hospital stays. There would be small premiums and co-payments, but those costs would be waived for any who couldn't afford to pay. Because many middle-income families can't afford health insurance, the initiative would include families who make up to 300 percent of the poverty-level income. That means families of four making $50,000 a year would be eligible. It's estimated that there are 71,000 uninsured children in the county. About 51,000 of them are eligible for health insurance, either through MediCal or the state's Healthy Families program. The primary focus of the initiative will be to find those children and sign them up. An extensive outreach program is set to start Jan. 2, 2001, with workers going to schools, clinics, day care centers and churches, knocking on doors and setting up tables at supermarkets to get the word out. This isn't easy. Efforts to sign kids up for Healthy Families have been woefully unsuccessful across the state because of the families' distrust of government and the volume of paperwork involved in the applications. But the beauty of the local initiative's approach is that workers
can identify families who are eligible for Healthy Families or
MediCal
and walk them through the application process. If
families aren't
eligible for either program, they won't go away Healthy Kids will be administered by the Santa Clara Family Health Plan, the county's MediCal HMO. Healthy Kids will offer the same coverage as MediCal but will be open to any child -- citizen or non-citizen -- who lives in the county and meets the income requirements. Healthy Kids is aimed at kids whose families earn too much to qualify for MediCal but don't have health insurance through their employers. There are about 20,000 such kids in the county. ''We're talking about families who've been turned down for so many programs,'' said Leona Butler, CEO of the Santa Clara Family Health Plan. ''This approach enables us to say to families, 'You walk in this door and you will walk out with health coverage.' '' The idea for this program came from labor and community groups. In order for it to work, it requires support from government and the private sector. The county is prepared to kick in $3 million a year in tobacco settlement funds and $2 million in tobacco tax money. The Santa Clara Family Health Plan will kick in another $1 million. But if all of those 71,000 children eventually sign up, additional money will be needed. Butler is hoping to attract at least $8 million in donations from other foundations, corporations and individuals. ''There's no question this valley has the resources to do this,'' said county health and hospitals director Bob Sillen. ''The question is whether it has the commitment to do this.'' One player that has yet to demonstrate its commitment is the
city
of San Jose. About half of the uninsured kids in the county
live
in San Jose, and the city has been asked to commit about
$2 million
a year in tobacco settlement money. Earlier this year
Mayor Ron
Gonzales adamantly refused to support the health It would be a shame if the city missed an opportunity to be part of this groundbreaking initiative. |
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