Mercury News Editorial: How to make children's health care a priority in California
December 6, 2008California's new Senate leader, Darrell Steinberg, wants to prove in his first 120 days in office that the California Legislature actually can accomplish something, despite recent evidence to the contrary.
Scoring a breakthrough on children's health insurance by the end of April would be a huge step in the right direction and a great down payment on Steinberg's leadership record.
Of the state's 10 million kids, 800,000 now are uninsured.
Basic health care for every child should be considered as essential as public education. It won't be easy to accomplish, given the state's huge budget shortfall, immigration issues and the resistance of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who essentially has held children's coverage hostage to his broader goal of comprehensive health care reform. But Steinberg's strategy has the best chance of any that have been tried since Schwarzenegger took office.
A key selling point is that Steinberg is not trying tap the state's general fund, which would be a nonstarter, given an $11 billion deficit. Instead, the Sacramento Democrat hopes to induce the California Children and Families Commission, also known as First 5, and two or three foundations to contribute $50 million each to jump-start the program. First 5 controls tobacco tax money from Proposition 10 in 1998.
This wouldn't be enough to cover every uninsured child, but it would be major progress. Every dollar the state invests in children's health care, including the First 5 and foundation dollars, can be matched by $2 in federal funds. Coupled with President-elect Barack Obama's strong desire to insure more children, California could insure hundreds of thousands in the next year.
We're hearing that Steinberg has been in talks with the governor, who always has championed preventive medicine programs for Californians of all ages to reduce long-term costs. Perhaps including these kinds of reforms will tip the scales for Schwarzenegger to support children's health insurance.
Some Californians don't want to pay for this program because they believe that most uninsured children are here illegally. But studies show that 80 percent of the uninsured are legal residents. And regardless of immigration status, the public ends up paying the bill when children are taken to hospital emergency rooms for problems that a family doctor could have treated for a tenth of the cost. In addition, kids' performance in school drops significantly when they don't have regular checkups by doctors and dentists — another public cost.
Steinberg's bill, SB 1, co-authored by Senate Health Committee Chair Elaine Alquist, D-San Jose, isn't the ultimate solution. That will require comprehensive reforms, which are most likely to come from Washington. But it's wrong to make vulnerable children wait for the perfect answer when California can do something now. Let's hope Steinberg can make it happen.