Health care advocates push for bill to protect KidsCare
Apr 2, 2018, 4:50 AM | Updated: 8:47 am
(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
(AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)
PHOENIX – With only a few weeks left in the Arizona legislative session, health care advocates want to pass a bill to protect a health insurance program for children.
The federal government currently pays for the entire cost of the KidsCare program, which provides low-cost health insurance for about 25,000 children in Arizona.
But if that federal match drops below 100 percent, the state would have to freeze enrollment.
Senate Bill 1087 would change that.
“This bill says we won’t have an automatic freeze,” Dana Wolfe Naimark, president and CEO of the Children’s Action Alliance. “Instead, we’ll put control back to the legislature.”
She said state lawmakers would be able to keep the program in place using state dollars.
A similar bill passed the House, but it stalled in the Senate when it did not get hearings in two committees where it was assigned.
Sen. Brophy McGee took the language of the bill and brought it up again as a striker bill, meaning she took the original language of SB 1087, which passed in the Senate, and replaced it with the new language aimed at protecting KidsCare.
The bill must now be approved in the House before the legislative session ends April 17.
To qualify for KidsCare, families must make between 138 percent and 200 percent of the federal poverty level. That’s an annual income of about $27,000 to nearly $41,000 for a family of three in Arizona.
Naimark recalled how “disastrous” it was for families when state lawmakers froze enrolment for KidsCare in 2010 as a way to cut state spending.
At the time, the state was paying for a portion of the program. KidsCare was restored in 2016, and now the federal government funds it entirely.
“When enrollment was frozen before, we know that many families went without the health care their children needed, even if they were in the middle of health care treatment,” she said. “They couldn’t get affordable health care coverage.
“We don’t want to go down that path again.”
