Here’s an ugly wake-up call for millions of state and local employees:
If you need health care for your kids, you might be better off working for Wal-Mart.
Most folks know Wal-Mart pays so little that many of its employees must turn to taxpayer-financed public health plans to get medical treatment.
But at least low-wage Wal-Mart workers can get medical help for their kids.
As Colorado Department of Transportation employee Deanna Cowles discovered recently, state employees cannot.
Based on age and income limits, Cowles’ two children qualify for the federal Child Health Plan Plus program.
CHP+ is supposed to provide medical care for the children of working people who cannot afford health insurance.
But it doesn’t work if you happen to be a state or local employee.
Then, by federal law, you’re out of luck. No matter how little you make.
“I feel like I’m being discriminated against because of where I work,” said Cowles, an account technician with CDOT.
There’s no question about it.
“There is no good news here,” said Colorado House Speaker Andrew Romanoff. “I don’t have a good answer.”
“This is frustrating,” added Dan Hopkins, press secretary for Gov. Bill Owens. “It has been for some time.”
Officials say Congress prohibited state and local employees from receiving CHP+ benefits when it passed a law authorizing the program in 1997. The thinking at the time was that states and localities would always make health insurance available to employees.
The problem for Cowles is the problem that has evolved for all lower-wage workers in the public and private sectors:
Too little income, too much cost and fragmented, inconsistent health policies leave people choosing between dinner or the doctor.
“The saddest part of Deanna’s situation is that the pay and benefits programs in this state are so miserly that any state employee qualifies for the Children’s Health Plan,” said Miller Hudson, executive director of the Colorado Association of Public Employees. “But making state employment a bar to receiving care is self-defeating to a program whose purpose was to make sure kids got served.”
Cowles has an 11-month-old baby girl, an 11-year-old daughter and a laid-off boyfriend scrambling to find a new job. She can’t afford to go without health insurance. She also can’t afford to pay for it.
CHP+’s exclusion of her kids forced Cowles to dip deep into her budget to pay $305 a month in insurance premiums, as well as $30 co-pays each time someone in the family goes to the doctor.
As she tries to raise a family of four on $28,980 a year, that quickly turns into a devastating Catch-22.
“Three weeks ago, the baby had an ear infection,” she said. “I had to pay $70. That cut into my grocery money and gas money. The baby’s had one ear infection a month for the last three months.
“I’ve had to seek assistance with food.”
Cowles used to consider herself middle class. Now, she’s thinking “low income.”
It’s a tough admission for a woman who prides herself on self-reliance. It’s absolutely maddening when Cowles watches a Denver neighbor who works at Wal-Mart trundle kids off for free or subsidized medical care under CHP+.
“We pay $750 a month in rent,” she said. “We’re not living high on the hog.
“It seems like you work and try to do the right thing and you can’t get assistance. You don’t work, and everything is handed to you.”
Or you work for the federal government and you get a pass.
The prohibition on receiving CHP+ doesn’t apply to the children of low-paid federal employees, confirmed Helen Collins, a spokeswoman for the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
If you’re wondering why Congress seems to have deemed one category of civil servant more worthy than others, don’t bother asking.
“I’m reluctant,” said Collins, “to comment on the intent of Congress.”
Not me. This policy stinks.
Jim Spencer’s column appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. He can be reached at 303-820-1771 or jspencer@denverpost.com.
