San Jose Mercury News
Wednesday, January 2, 2002

Editorial
Kid's health plan gets boost
Sun employees raise funds to insure needy children

The partnership with Sun Microsystems is the first of its kind for the Children's Health Initiative, which provides health coverage in
Santa Clara County.

By Michelle Guido

The Children's Health Initiative, whose goal is to provide health insurance to the 70,000 children in Santa Clara County without coverage, has entered a partnership with workers at Sun Microsystems in an employee-driven fundraising effort.

It's the first of what initiative officials hope will be many partnerships with private funding sources, which the program counts on in coming years to help it grow and reach the number of children envisioned.

It all began with Sun business development manager Stanley Huang, who met a Children's Health Initiative spokeswoman this fall on a shuttle bus to the airport. They got to talking, and Huang decided he not only wanted to contribute to the effort, but that he wanted to get his colleagues at Sun to do the same.

So he and a few others started an e-mail campaign at work. Within the first week, about $3,000 had been raised. The final tally from the monthlong e-mail campaign won't be available until mid-January.

"I had not heard about the program before, and it really hit home with me, because healthy kids are so important,'' said Huang, who has one child. "I work at a big company, and I know there are probably a lot of people like me, who have seen how this valley has changed, and I wanted to give back to this area.''

So Huang approached the Sun Foundation, which matches employee contributions to charities and other causes, and he found out that the Children's Health Initiative would qualify for matching funds. He immediately wrote a check for $1,000 -- enough to insure one child for a year. With the foundation's matching fund program, Huang's contribution will insure two children under the county's plan.

Since January, nearly 24,000 children have been signed up through the county's initiative, the nation's first of its kind. When they asked San Jose for money before the program's debut, initiative officials told the city they hoped to have 600 San Jose children signed up by the end of June.

"It's a really wonderful thing that Sun employees are doing -- especially now that Silicon Valley companies are having a more difficult time,'' said Leona Butler, CEO of the Santa Clara Family Health Plan.

Finding the children

The $14 million-a-year program is paid for in part by tobacco tax and tobacco settlement money -- which covers about $8 million a year. But that money only pays about half of what it costs to cover the county's uninsured children. About two-thirds of those children qualify for government-funded programs, so a big part of the initiative involves seeking them out and signing them up for those programs.

The remaining children who lack insurance fall into two categories: Undocumented immigrants whose parents don't qualify for government-funded programs and children in families who make more than 250 percent of the federal poverty limit -- which is the income cutoff for the government programs.

The employee program at Sun prompted Children's Health Initiative officials to set up an online giving program. Now, people who want to contribute any amount can go directly to www. healthykidsfund.org and make a credit card contribution.

"We're looking at this as a community-wide endeavor,'' said Craig Walsh, former senior marketing manager for the San Francisco 49ers, who now heads the fundraising effort for the initiative. "It's great for our arsenal to have a corporate-match program, but we're also committed to bringing the fundraising effort down to the individual level, because we feel this program helps all people in Santa Clara County.''

Full coverage

Under the Children's Health Initiative, kids who lack insurance can be covered by one of three plans for a full range of services, including checkups, immunizations, dental and vision care, prescription drugs and hospital stays. In some cases, there are small premiums and co-payments involved, but they're based on a sliding scale and waived for families who can't afford to pay.

Those three programs are Medi-Cal and Healthy Families -- which are the state and federally funded programs -- and a newly formed Healthy Kids plan administered by the Santa Clara Family Health Plan, an HMO that provides healthcare for certain families who don't qualify for government aid.

The money raised by Sun and other private sources pays the premiums for children enrolled in the Healthy Kids program.

Sun's Huang said he hopes others at companies throughout the valley will follow with employee-driven fundraising programs of their own.

"I hope we can spur enough interest -- not just in funds -- but so others will use this as a model,'' he said. "A lot of us are really locked up in our day-to-day routines and we forget we have a lot to be grateful for. Health insurance is a basic need that everyone in this country deserves.''

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