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More children to get health care, speaker says
YOUNGSTOWN
More Ohio children will get health care now and in the future because of national health-care reforms enacted earlier this year, said Tricia Brooks of the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute’s Center for Children and Families.
Brooks presented an overview Wednesday of health-care reform, technically the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, during a community forum on National Health Care Reform at the Youngstown Club sponsored by Voices for Ohio’s Children, a children’s advocacy group.
More moderate-income families will get financial help to purchase private health-care insurance, meaning more children will be covered too, at the same time strengthening the insurance industry, Brooks said during an interview before the community forum.
A major strategy of national health-care reform is to enable small businesses and individuals to purchase private insurance that may be subsidized through tax credits, she said.
Also, Brooks said, under the new law, parents’ eligibility income requirements for a family of three increased from $18,301 a year to $24,340, which means more adults will be eligible for Medicaid, at the same time reaching more children.
Brooks is an assistant research professor at the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute, where she works on policy and implementation issues affecting coverage for children and families. Her focus is on children who are eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid and/or the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).
Before joining Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families, she was SCHIP director in New Hampshire and chief executive officer of the New Hampshire Healthy Kids Corp., a nonprofit organization established by the state.
In Ohio, there are 77,000 children eligible for subsidized health care who are not enrolled, said Sandy Erb, spokeswoman for Voices for Ohio’s Children.
The health-reform law requires parents to enroll their children if they are uninsured, Brooks said.
She said technology is an important tool in reducing paperwork and breaking down barriers to enrolling or re-enrolling eligible children, which lead to lack of preventative care or gaps in continuity of care resulting in more frequent and expensive hospitalizations.
Brooks said other states, such as Louisiana and Utah, are using technology to great advantage in eliminating enrollment and re-enrollment and other problems caused by red tape.
Also, she noted, health-care reform likely will help states with the cost of the technology. There is a proposed rule that the federal government pay 90 percent of the cost of the technology needed for an improved eligibility system.
“This is a prime opportunity for Ohio to tap into this money,” she said. “The ultimate goal is making sure kids get good health care.”