Hide Article Text (OCR)
By DONNA E. SHALALA Guest Columnist There was a time when the parents of children who lacked health insurance had little choice but to walk into a local emergency room when illness set in. It was not at all unusual for hospital emer gency wards - especially in urban communities -- to host infants and toddlers with earaches, fevers, and viruses right alongside heart attack and stroke victims, accident victims and people with knife and gunshot wounds. In the vernacular of today’s pop culture, one could ask the ques tion: What's wrong with this pic ture? What's wrong is this: Because they lacked health coverage for their children, parents had no regular physician for their Children to get routine, preventive checkups or tend to their children’s minor illnesses. Who else were they going to go to with their sick kids but to the emergency rooms? It's been more than a year since Congress agreed with President Clinton's innovative solution to the problem of uninsured children by passing his $24 billion, five-year Children’s Health Insurance Pro gram (CHIP) initiative - the largest single expansion of health in surance for children in 30 years. The goal of CHIP is to provide health insurance coverage to as many of the nation’s 11 million uninsured children as possible by providing resources to individual States to expand Medicaid, develop new child health in surance programs or do both. Most of the children who will be helped will come from working families too poor to afford health insurance, but not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. And, many of them are also racial and ethnic minorities. To date, 49 states and territories have submitted their CHIP plans to my department - the U.S. Depart ment of Health and Human Ser vices. We have approved 45 of those plans. But we cannot take the view that CHIP is over and done with now that it has been signed into law. That would be a mistake. In fact, the real work has now begun, and the success of the initiative depends on how well we get the word out to families in our com munities that this new assistance exists. It comes down to churches, schools, civic clubs, professional organizations, the philanthropic community, child care providers, state and local government agen cies and even workplaces - all of the places that working parents frequent - helping to inform families about the availability of this coverage. When the families of 4 million children who are present ly uninsured don’t know that they are eligible right now -- immedi ately for coverage under Medicaid, it's clear that we cannot do enough outreach on this issue. There is also a role for private business in helping to get the word out. Several major national com panies have already established beachheads for other private in dustry colleagues to land on. Bell Atlantic, for example, is teaming up with the National Governors’ As sociation to set up a toll-free num ber early next year to enroll unenrolled children and point families to their local Medicaid agencies. Procter and Gamble, who makes diapers, is planning to pack an informational letter on health, insurance options in its childbirth education packages. The private sector has a clear stake in CHIP's success. Any busi ness leader thinking critically about America’s future productivity knows that the issue of uninsured children goes to the heart of the quality of tomorrow's workforce. That's especially important to African Americans and other minorities as America becomes more and more diverse. Frankly, everyone stands to benefit from CHIP - not just unin sured parents and their children. Fewer trips to crowded emergency rooms for non-emergencies, a healthier minority population right from the start in life, and working parents who spend less time miss ing work because their children get good preventive care, will help hold down health care costs and improve overall productivity. But the bottom line for all of us - whether we're government, busi ness, or community leaders is that we can never do enough for our children. The well-being of children is a shared responsibility that builds the future of all society. Donna E. Shalala is a member of President Clinton's Cabinet as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Newspaper Details
Cincinnati Call and Post
Cincinnati, Ohio, US
Thu, Dec 10, 1998
Page 7
Full Page
Clipped by
James A.
USA 18 Aug 2026
Other Publications Near Cincinnati, Ohio
Cincinnati Times Star
Cincinnati Commercial Tribune
Cincinnati Volksfreund
Cincinnati Daily Gazette
Cincinnati Commercial Gazette
