Investing in children is an investment in the future

In a conference call today, the Commonwealth Fund discussed a new report which ranks all 50 states and the District of Colombia on key measures of how each state’s health care systems are working for children. The report, to be released tomorrow, assesses states on 13 measures on their health care, quality care, health care costs, health care equity and the potential to lead long healthy lives.

The Commonwealth Fund is a private foundation that supports independent issues on health care research, and try to get proper information to policy makers to make policy decisions according to the needs of the people. Unlike adult health care, children’s health care relies heavily on federal and states funding not private insurance. According to the report Michigan has the lowest amount of uninsured children at five percent, whereas Texas has 20 percent of uninsured children. Edward Schor, vice president for child development and preventative care at the Commonwealth Fund, said that if every state had only five percent of children uninsured, there wold be 4.6 million more insured children cutting the amount of uninsured children in half.

The main purpose of the report, according to Karen David, president of the Commonwealth Fund, is to help individual states better their health policies for children. States can learn from each other and should model their own policies after successful states, because investing in children’s health is an investment in the future, said Schor.

There is a wide variation across the states, and the report is intended to bring attention to high performance, not as an ideal of what would be desirable but to show what is feasible and what has been achieved by others, said David. In general the south ranked poorly, and Iowa and Vermont led in overall performance. More information and a state by state ranking can be seen at www.commonwealthfund.org.

Work place raids leave children without parents

The Workforce Subcommittee held a hearing this morning on “ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) Workplace Raids: Their impact on U.S. Children, Families, and Communities.” The subcommittee is under the Education and Labor Committee chaired by Congressman George Miller. The witnesses included James Spero, acting Deputy Assistant Director of the Office of Investigations from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Janet Murguia, president of the National Council of La Raza was on hand in addition to Katherine Gibey, principle of San Pedro Elementary school in Ran Rafael, Ca and Simon Romo, chief counsel to the New Mexico Child Protective Services.

The subcommittee convened as there is growing concern over raids in the workplace which are taking children away from their parents. There are reports of children losing their parents in immigration raids, which is resulting in stress, and in some cases post traumatic stress disorder for the children, let alone the issue of tearing families and communities apart. When incidents like this occur children miss school which is further affecting the education system. 4.7 million children have at least one parent that is in this country illegally, and the issues that these situations are causing for children is becoming an issue that is gaining more and more attention.

Last week the largest immigration raid to ever be conducted took place in Iowa where almost 400 people were taken into custody. From Joe Wilson’s (R-SC) testimony, he states that “an article by the Associated Press reported that “56 were released on humanitarian grounds, typically because their arrest would leave a child with no custodian. A handful were released because of medical conditions.””

Subcommitte on Health Hearing Debates Medical Coverage for Uninsured Children

Rep. Frank Pallone Jr. (D-NJ) chaired a House Committee on Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Health hearing focused on providing affordable healthcare for uninsured children. The witness panel called into question included five governors from different regions of the country, providing the committee with a diverse group of state leaders to comment on the progress made by the Bush Administration in regard to healthcare.

The progress of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) was hotly debated. The purpose of SCHIP is to provide uninsured children whose parents make too much money to qualify for Medicaid with health coverage. Governor Haley Barbour (R-MS) was particularly adamant about reforming SCHIP, arguing that providing affordable coverage for children was growing increasingly more difficult as a result of state funding simply not providing enough money to finance such initiatives.

The benefits of programs such as SCHIP are evident. At the same time, as some such as Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) pointed out, the success of the program has been limited and reforming legislation is necessary to ensuring the success of future government healthcare programs. Children are not the only ones who suffer from unaffordable healthcare, Shadegg explained, as the cost of healthcare is an issue that affects all Americans.

While President Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy and limits in government spending have come under fire in recent months, concerns about the lack of funding for healthcare programs have grown to be an increasingly important, and controversial, issue for Americans to debate.