Copyright 2000 The Chronicle Publishing Co.
The San
Francisco Chronicle
FEBRUARY 1, 2000, TUESDAY, FINAL; CONTRA
COSTA EDITION
SECTION: NEWS; Pg. A15
LENGTH: 602 words
HEADLINE:
Proposal To Help Uninsured;
Contra Costa plan to get
health coverage for kids
BYLINE: Jason
B. Johnson, Chronicle Staff Writer
BODY:
When Norma
Salazar's 4-year-old daughter, Norma Naomi, fractured her arm recently, she took
the child to a hospital emergency room. The wound was treated, but Norma Salazar
is still worried.
The bill will be due soon, and her family has no
health insurance. "I'm worried about the bill," Salazar, who
lives in Pittsburg, said through an interpreter. "I don't have insurance. It's
hard."
About 8,000 children in Contra Costa County do not have health
insurance. Many, like Norma Naomi Salazar, are eligible for Medi-Cal and the
Healthy Families program but are not fully enrolled.
County health
officials today will present a plan to the Board of Supervisors to enroll
thousands of children and families into underused state health programs over the
next year.
The Contra Costa Health Services Department plan outlines
five goals for the year, which include identifying more children who qualify for
the services through school, such as free and reduced-cost lunch programs.
A big part of the problem is that people do not know their children are
eligible, said county Health Services Director William Walker.
And with
welfare reform, many families who are coming off cash assistance do not realize
that they are still eligible for additional health benefits.
Illegal
immigrants have also been reluctant to ask for services.
"There's a myth
out in the Hispanic community in particular . . . (they feel) that they should
not be utilizing services that would hinder their chances for citizenship," said
Walker.
Outreach to immigrants and other groups is a major part of the
plan. Other goals include coordinating various agencies' activities in
neighborhoods and simplifying the enrollment process.
Walker said it is
not clear yet how much it would cost to implement the plan. He and advocates for
the uninsured and underinsured said such children are often at risk for serious
illnesses like anemia, scoliosis and meningitis.
"There are a number of
things where appropriate screening and treatment are required for a child to
grow and not have long-term health consequences," said Kathy Lafferty, of the
Cambridge Community Center in Concord. "Some things just don't get better by
themselves."
California's Medi-Cal and Healthy Families programs have
the potential to cover more than 1 million of the state's 1.85 million uninsured
children, according to a study produced last year by Health Insurance Policy
Program, a joint project of the Center for Health and Public Policy Studies at
the University of California at Berkeley and the University of California at Los
Angeles Center for Health Policy Research.
The study said serious
deficiencies exist within the program's structure that result in limited
enrollment.
The study found that 42 percent of Californians who earn
$12,000 to $19,000 a year were uninsured,
compared with 59 percent of those who earn less than $12,000.
Helen Schauffler, director of the UC Berkeley program and one of the
report's principal authors, said it is a serious problem that the state and
local governments must solve.
By the time uninsured parents take their
children to emergency rooms for treatment, their medical problems have become
serious and are much more expensive to treat, said Schauffler.
"It's
critical that we extend the coverage," said Schauffler. "The disadvantage is
that these kids aren't getting basic primary care. If these kids aren't getting
immunized, then they can pass on communicable diseases."
For information
on enrolling children in Healthy Families or Medi-Cal, call 1 (888) 747-1222.
LOAD-DATE: February 10, 2000
