This year’s legislative session marked an important time for the health of Colorado’s children and families.
The legislature and Governor directed millions of dollars towards improving the health of our state’s kids and families.
From bolstering the Colorado Infant Immunization Program, an information system that allows doctors to ensure that kids are up-to-date on shots, to investing in health information technology that improves efficiencies in the health care system and reduces waste, to strengthening Colorado’s Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+) providing coverage for previously uninsured kids in our state; we can truly say within one year, we have made some of the most significant advancements in improving our state’s health care system in one legislative session than we have in the past few years combined.
While other states are cutting back, proposing budgets with diminished investments in health care, Colorado is moving forward, laying a solid foundation for future progress. We are investing in the health of our children and families.
It’s a smart investment at an important time for our state. Data from this year’s KidsCount report, which provides an annual look at our children’s well-being, showed that between 2000 and 2006, Colorado had the fastest growing rate of poverty in the nation.
The report also showed that Colorado is last in the nation in the percentage of poor children who have health insurance coverage.
With these kinds of troubling trends, it is critical the state capitalize on any resources available, and many of the dollars dedicated this year will be matched by the federal government, doubling or tripling the amount of money our state puts into the economy.
That’s money that gets spent in Colorado on our state’s kids, ensuring that they get eyeglasses, health screenings, counseling and medications.
Under proposed legislation to expand eligibility to the Child Health Plan Plus program, kids in families earning about $47,000 for a family of four (up to 225% of the federal poverty level) will now qualify for the program.
That could mean anywhere from 11,000 to 16,000 newly insured children – a huge impact from a single policy change.
While there are important improvements to be made to the Child Health Plan Plus program, we know the program is providing critical health coverage to the kids and families who desperately need it.
Additionally, when children go without insurance, families are often forced to seek services in emergency rooms or from providers who cannot recoup the cost of services.
Those costs do not disappear, instead showing up in the insurance rates of those who are covered, resulting in increasingly unaffordable rates for everyone.
The cycle continues when because of this increasing cost of coverage, more families are pushed out of the market, joining the ranks of the uninsured.
The “cost-shift” associated with children in our state has been estimated to be about $79 million, with $50 million of that paid by businesses in the form of increased rates. When kids and families have access to a system that works for them, everyone sees the benefits.
Perhaps the biggest return on investment, however, is one that can never be quantified. Uninsured children admitted to a hospital due to injuries were twice as likely to die while in the hospital as their insured counterparts. The state budget has no line item for that.
This session, legislators and the Governor supported policies aimed at increasing the number of doctors in rural areas by more adequately reimbursing them for providing care to low-income kids and families.
They also invested an additional $1.4 million dollars in outreach to the CHP+ program, which will help make sure that those who need the program know about it.
They removed barriers to enrollment so that families don’t have to submit as much paperwork and they increased the mental health benefits for children in the CHP+ program, removing limits on the number of visits to a mental health provider a kid has access to.
With this foundation in place, Colorado is poised to make new leaps in health care in the coming years. Leadership at every level must continue to build on these investments and Coloradans have a clear responsibility to ensure that health care remains a priority for our Governor and our legislators. Our children are counting on us.
Megan Ferland is the president of the Colorado Children’s Campaign.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
