By Wendy Lazarus, Founder, The Children’s Partnership

As we head into that time of year when our young people are graduating from high-school

and college, many commencement speeches will acknowledge the sacrifices many parents make to ensure their children succeed. Imagine how much more difficult that becomes when a child requires medical care and his or her parents are unable to access a doctor or health care coverage. As legislative leaders and the Governor wrestle over budget decisions to decide the fate of children who rely on Healthy Families, our state’s moms and dads deserve someone to stand up for them.

In a recent Capitol Weekly piece, I described the details of how health care for nearly a million California kids hangs in the balance as the Legislature completes its budget deliberations, which includes the Governor’s proposal to close the doors of the Healthy Families Program. The Legislature has an opportunity to pass what the Assembly and Senate Budget Subcommittees did: keep all kids, except those required by the ACA to move to the Medi-Cal program, in the Healthy Families Program. By any measure, Healthy Families is highly successful. California children who are newly enrolled in Healthy Families have been shown to have a nearly 63% improvement in performance and paying attention in class. Studies also show Healthy Families has substantially improved kids’ access to needed health care and produced meaningful improvements in their physical, mental, and social well-being.

The Governor plans to transfer nearly one million children in Healthy Families into California’s already overstretched Medi-Cal program over a brief nine-month period, starting in October 2012. Not only does it leave the Medi-Cal program inadequate time to prepare to receive so many new kids and get them set up properly in a new health care program, but families are already facing difficulties finding a doctor or dentist who will take their kids under Medi-Cal. So Medi-Cal needs more time to shore up the network of doctors for the children it already serves before stretching its capacity to add almost 900,000 more children. This is not the time to move nearly a million children from Healthy Families.

Instead of this overreach that could undermine the progress made in promoting healthy kids, a common sense, alternative approach is recommended by over 40 organizations. We recommend a more gradual shift, moving 200,000 Healthy Families kids into Medi-Cal-those kids who, based on the new federal health reform law, will be enrolled in Medi-Cal with their families by January 2014.

Last week, Governor Brown released a May revision to his budget proposal that ignored recommendations for an incremental approach. These huge disruptions to health care programs for nearly a million children do not even produce significant budget savings, so why put these children at risk? Any parent sending their graduates off to their future knows that being a parent is a tough job, 365 days a year. Today’s parents should not face a lack of access to health care for their children. The Governor and Legislators should protect the children covered in Healthy Families AND help parents and the families that rely on them to have healthier–and more secure– lives.

Wendy Lazarus, Founder & Co-President of The Children’s Partnership, has been an advocate for children, nationally and in California, for more than three decades.

by Wendy Lazarus

In the year since President Obama signed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) into law on March 23, 2010, a sea of ink and digital bits have been spilled on every possible angle of commentary and advocacy about the law.  But a year later, one simple conclusion deserves its share of sunshine:  Health Reform is good for America’s 74 million children.

The Good News:

Insurance companies are no longer able to deny any child health coverage for chronic conditions.  Common conditions such as asthma or diabetes were previously excuses for refusing coverage, even though these are the conditions that most often require health care for children.  These diagnoses are grim enough to receive anyway. You can imagine the relief, now, for families who no longer have to fear whether they can get basic health insurance for their child.  In California, alone, 1.1 million children and youth under age 25 have pre-existing conditions that previously would have resulted in health coverage denials.

Take, for example, this story from Celina, a MomsRising member from California. Her story demonstrates why moving forward with health care reform is critical for ensuring all kids have the chance to grow up healthy:

Another relief to many families is that young adults can stay on their parent’s insurance through the age of 26. With a struggling economy, this option can be essential for young adults who are just getting started, and especially for those for whom a gap in health coverage would be life-threatening. Here’s an example from our colleagues at Young Invincibles: Sara, a 22-year-old with Type I Diabetes.  After she began working a part-time job, she no longer qualified for Medicaid, and, without insurance, she would have to pay over $850 a month to control her condition.  Her options are woefully limited without health reform.

And it’s not just these individual stories that show how the law is making a difference.  After the first year, the impact of the expanded coverage can be seen in a rise in enrollment.  In California alone, Health Access estimates the number of newly eligible enrollees to be 200,000. And the California Public Employee Retirement System (CalPERS) reports to have enrolled 28,000 new older children.

For children and young people, especially, the focus needs to be on wellness and prevention-and it is under the Affordable Care Act.  The good news is that families cannot be required to pay co-payments for preventive screenings, a provision that will protect nearly 6 million children under age 19 in California alone.  By ensuring that children receive the right vaccinations and diagnoses, more expensive health care costs down the road can be avoided.  More good news: insurance companies can’t just drop children when they are sick or limit the lifetime value of coverage.

And, families will finally have more control over their own lives. Without being restricted to employer-based coverage, if a child has a condition that would have been previously denied, a parent can make employment decisions that are in the best interest of their family, without risking their child’s coverage.

The Challenge Ahead:

If we are to reach our goal of making sure all of America’s 74 million children are insured by 2014, we cannot sit back now and jeopardize these tremendous gains. We must encourage political leaders to ensure that federal funding and guidance are available for full and effective implementation of ACA.  

Making health reform work for families depends on states taking thoughtful and swift action, too. At this time when states across the country are struggling with serious budget deficits, we urge elected officials along with employers and philanthropic leaders to support states as they leverage the available federal funding for implementation as soon as possible.

As debate about the law continues in Congress and in the courts, we must remind ourselves that quality healthcare is good for our kids-and every child should have the opportunity to grow up healthy.

Wendy Lazarus is the Founder and Co-President of The Children’s Partnership, which advocates for improvements in child health care. Ms. Lazarus has been involved in advocacy for health coverage for all children for more than 35 years.