Special section on
health care access:

This article originally appeared in the May-June 2001 issue of the Children's Advocate, published by Action Alliance for Children.

Toward health insurance for all California kids

By Jean Tepperman

The 100% Campaign is a coalition of the Children's Defense Fund, Children Now, and the Children's Partnership, working for health insurance coverage for all children in California. Although Healthy Families enrollment has increased—390,000 this year compared to 250,000 last year—and the state is moving to include parents in the program, 2 million children and 1.3 million parents are still uninsured. More than half of these are actually eligible for Healthy Families or Medi-Cal (see Getting to health care: Tackling insurance problems).

The 100% Campaign is calling for some basic changes in state-funded health insurance:

• Develop a simple administrative structure for Medi-Cal and Healthy Families so that families can apply through one application to one program, called Healthy Families

• Streamline the eligibility rules and enrollment procedures so that families can more easily apply for, use, and retain their health insurance

• Extend coverage to parents so that an entire family with an income up to 250 percent of the federal poverty line can be insured—the state's current plan calls for insuring parents up to 200 percent of poverty and children up to 250 percent.

The 100% Campaign is supporting several current bills that would move the health insurance system closer to these goals:

• Elimination of unnecessary application steps, such as requiring documentation not required by federal law (SB 833—Ortiz/Chesbro)

• Elimination of the cumbersome paperwork required from parents to document their assets (SB 833—Ortiz/Chesbro)

• Increase of eligibility to 250 percent of the federal poverty level for parents with children enrolled in Medi-Cal and Healthy Families (SB 785—Ortiz)

• Implementation of "Express Lane Eligibility" to ease enrollment for children who currently participate in Food Stamps, WIC, and the Free and Reduced Price School Meals programs (SB 493—Sher, SB 833—Ortiz/Chesbro, and AB 59—Cedillo)

In addition, the 100% Campaign is asking for a budget increase for additional training and support for community based application assistors.

For more information, contact the 100% Campaign at 510-763-2444, ext. 122, www.100percentcampaign.org

Return to top

Action Alliance
for Children
e-mail aac@4children.org
1201 Martin Luther
King Jr. Way
Oakland, CA 94612
(510) 444-7136