From Deborah Bryan, CEO of Action for Children North Carolina:
Enrollment for the health insurance marketplaces created by the new health care law has begun. The news will continue to be full of stories about successes and failures, quotes about hopes and fears and predictions about deliverance and disaster.
In all this controversy, we need to remember that the Affordable Care Act is primarily aimed at insuring adults, including parents, but the issue of covering children has had bipartisan support for 15 years. Through Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (known here as NC Health Choice), public health insurance coverage is available for all children ages birth to 19 in families with incomes up to 200 percent of the federal poverty guidelines ($47,100 for a family of four).
These public health insurance programs have been so successful that they now cover about 44 million children nationwide, or about 87 percent of those estimated to be eligible. While this participation rate is better than almost all other federal and state programs, it still means that about 4 million eligible children remained unenrolled. That includes about 118,000 children in North Carolina. For one reason or another, outreach efforts have not yet reached these families.
Child advocates have hoped that, as more parents apply for and receive insurance under the new law, they would become aware of the public coverage available for their children. There are, however, two “glitches” that are likely to get in the way. The first is that our state leaders have not accepted the Medicaid expansion offered under the law. This means that adults in families below 100 percent of the federal poverty guidelines will be eligible neither for Medicaid nor subsidies available through the marketplace. The second – an apparent compromise reached during the negotiation process on the law – is that the family of a parent who already has access to affordable individual insurance coverage is not eligible for marketplace coverage.
In both cases adults will be disappointed to learn that they may not benefit from the new law. However, children probably do qualify for Medicaid or NC Health Choice, and the challenge is to make parents aware that such coverage remains available. Hopefully that will be done if these parents make contact with the marketplace enrollment process. However, if they hear that they may not benefit and thus do not even make contact, their children will remain uninsured.
In these cases, we all have a role to play. If you know parents at work, from the PTA, at your workplace, the YMCA, your child’s sports leagues, your neighborhood association or book club, encourage everyone to spread the word that Medicaid and NC Health Choice remain available as options for children’s coverage even when parents are not eligible for marketplace coverage.
While there is still plenty of room for debate over the new health care law, there is already bipartisan agreement that we all win when children get the health care they need. Children avoid unnecessary absences and can focus on school, and parents can stay on the job instead of missing work to care for ailing kids. Families are economically stronger because a childhood illness or accident won’t drive them deeper into debt. And when North Carolina’s families and workers are stronger and more productive, our whole economy benefits.