Ensure good health care for kids

This year, all four members of Maine’s congressional delegation can play important roles in expanding the State Children Health Insurance Program to provide health care to more of America’s children. This year the Congress is set to renew this program – providing a critical opportunity to reduce the number of uninsured children in our country.

The facts are very clear: Children who have health insurance grow up healthier. Parents from families who lack health insurance cannot afford to provide their children the routine preventive medical attention that insured families take for granted. Uninsured children seldom get flu shots; they don’t visit the doctor when they run a fever; they don’t get prescription medicines to treat common infections. When uninsured children are ill, most parents try to treat the children at home until the illness becomes very serious. As a result, the first time uninsured children typically enter the health care system is through a hospital emergency room.

To see what difference that makes, consider two children afflicted with asthma, an increasingly common childhood condition. A child with health insurance is likely to have an early diagnosis and early medical treatment. He will take prescription medicines to relieve the symptoms and get a flu shot every winter. If he has a breathing problem, he can call a nurse and be seen right away. A child without health insurance lives with the condition, untreated and perhaps undiagnosed, until an attack is so serious that it lands him in a hospital emergency room.

For the uninsured child, asthma is truly a life-threatening and life-shaping condition. He suffers more stress, and misses more days of school, which may slow his academic performance. An illness can also cause economic setbacks for parents who have to miss days of work to take care of sick children.

When children are uninsured, we all pay. The math is pretty basic: Compare a clinic or doctor office visit at $100 to a series of trips to the emergency room at $300 each, or even to a hospital stay at more than $1,500 a day. All of us bear the costs of emergency care for the uninsured in the form of higher premiums on our own health insurance. By comparison, health insurance for all children is a real bargain.

This is why it’s critical for Maine’s members of Congress to help secure a strong SCHIP reauthorization bill. Sen. Snowe has already helped lead the way as the co-author of a new bill to expand funding for children’s health care by about $50 billion over the next five years. The legislation is a positive step toward covering all of our nation’s children.

The bill provides a critical increase in funding for Maine’s SCHIP program. At the proposed level of funding, Maine could continue to cover all those now enrolled in the program. If funding remained at current levels, Maine would have to cut the number of kids covered or the level of care, because of rising health care costs.

The increased funding would allow Maine to reach many of the 11,000 children who are eligible for coverage but not yet enrolled. Maine also would have the flexibility to expand coverage to reach more children – including the ability to support employer-sponsored plans for families that need assistance. The bill’s distribution formula also rewards Maine and other states that have managed program funds effectively. The bill also expands the successful partner program, Medicaid, an important feature since most of our nation’s uninsured children eligible for public programs qualify for Medicaid.

Now Sen. Collins can demonstrate the wisdom and leadership she exhibited in 1997 when she co-sponsored the original SCHIP legislation by cosponsoring the Snowe bill and working with Senate leaders to ensure a strong SCHIP reauthorization. Rep. Tom Allen sits on the House committee that will consider SCHIP. He has already indicated he will propose provisions similar to those in Sen. Snowe’s bill. Although Rep. Mike Michaud is not on a committee that will handle the bill, we know we can count on his support when the SCHIP bill reaches the House floor.

Ensuring that our children get health care is good, sound public policy. Expanding SCHIP and Medicaid is good for children, good for parents, and good for the health care system. It also makes good common sense.

Elinor Goldberg is president and CEO of the Maine Children’s Alliance.