Opinion

Tom O'Shea: Special week a rallying cry for our kids

April 23 marks the beginning of National Cover the Uninsured Week, which has traditionally sought to raise awareness about the need to provide health coverage for all Americans. This year, however, is the perfect time to highlight the need to insure one of the most vulnerable populations: our children.

In California, where state leaders have declared 2007 as the "Year of Healthcare Reform," this week should serve as a spring board to set priorities and reinvigorate the real work that is needed to begin reforming our broken health care system. And it should start with an acknowledgment that no health care reform is successful unless lawmakers pass a solution to provide health insurance for every California child.

California voters are counting on our state leaders to tackle this important issue. In a November 2006 poll commissioned by the United Ways of California, 81 percent of voters responded that they support ensuring that all kids have health insurance. Working parents hope they do, too. Many hard-working families make too much money to qualify for Medi-Cal or Healthy Families, but not enough to pay for health insurance for their children. In fact, 71 percent of uninsured kids are in families where the head of household works full time all year.

If you look at the facts, it's easy to come to the conclusion that any meaningful health care reform must include covering all California children — it's not only the right thing to do for our kids, but it's the right policy for the state as a whole.

Covering all kids will help reduce costs on the entire system and make health care more affordable for everyone, which is a major goal of health care reform. Countless studies have shown that children who have health insurance are more likely to get the care they need to ensure healthy development, including preventive care, immunizations and basic check-ups, all of which helps identify or prevent problems before they get serious and more costly. For example, every dollar spent on childhood immunizations saves $13 down the road.

We're already paying for the cost of caring for uninsured children who wind up receiving care in the emergency room, so we should do it in a more cost-effective and humane way by providing health insurance. The cost of insuring a child is less than $100 per month, while the average emergency room visit is $435. Why wait until a child is so sick that he or she requires emergency care or hospitalization when a simple vaccine or well-child visit could have prevented a serious illness in a child?

Moreover, covering all children is good for public health. As the saying goes, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Providing all kids with access to immunizations and regular checkups can help prevent serious public-health hazards down the line. With increasing numbers of emerging and re-emerging diseases, the best way to safeguard everyone's health is to ensure the health of all children.

Luckily, providing health coverage for every child in our state is a goal within reach that the Legislature and governor could accomplish this year.

Ninety percent of California's 10 million children are already insured. Roughly half of the 763,000 who remain uninsured qualify for existing public programs like Healthy Families and Medi-Cal. It would cost relatively little — about $330 million — to finish the job.

Clearly, it's time to finish the job on children's health. Even one year without health care coverage could have lifelong implications for a child, as well as a life's worth of increased costs on the entire system. Ensuring all kids have comprehensive, reliable coverage is a reform that is long overdue. What better time than this week — "Cover the Uninsured Week" — to make a rallying cry for our children's health.

Our kids can't wait any longer.

Tom O'Shea is a senior vice president at Chaminade and a longtime board member of the Santa Cruz United Way.