sábado, 10 de marzo de 2007
New program offers health insurance for uncovered Children's Health Initiative Napa County
By Denise Holley
Parents answered a new question last fall on the emergency contact forms the Calistoga schools sent home: “What kind of health insurance does your child have?” If the answer was “none”, they got a call from Wendy Lopez, community liaison at the Calistoga Family Center, an organization next to Calistoga Elementary School that assists families of students. Lopez combed through the school forms and identified 120 kids in the district who lacked health insurance, she said.
Through the new Children’s Health Initiative (CHI ) Napa County, kids 18 and under who can’t get Medi-Cal or Healthy Families insurance can enroll in a new program called Healthy Kids, Lopez said. Legal residency is not required, but families pay a monthly premium based on their income.
The California Endowment granted $220,000 for the first year of CHI Napa County, said executive director Mark Diel. Last November, Napa Valley Vintners gave $1,050,000 to the local initiative.
Without health insurance, “they (children) use the emergency room much more often, they miss days of school and their parents miss work,” Diel said. Kids can suffer from dental pain and be unable to concentrate in class or need glasses and not be able to see the board.
Diel estimates there are 4,000 uninsured kids in Napa County and about 1,200 will qualify only for the Healthy Kids program. Enrollment outreach began In Napa in November 2005 and started in Calistoga in April, he said.
Lopez took an online course in January to become a certified application assistant, she said. Armed with her new knowledge, she can quickly determine which children in the family qualify for which health insurance program.
Since May, Lopez has enrolled 97 children for health insurance – 44 in Healthy Kids, 43 in Healthy Families and 10 in Medi-Cal, she said.
Now the net has grown wider. Some of the families that listed Medi-Cal had only emergency coverage, such as for a hospital visit, Lopez said. They couldn’t use the card for preventative visits to a clinic. Now she is trying to notify those families they can enroll their child for full coverage, including vision, dental and mental health care.
Families that earn too much to qualify for Medi-Cal may be eligible for Healthy Families or Healthy Kid, because those programs have a higher monthly income limit, Lopez said.
The initiative is funded for three years, Diel said. Other donors include Queen of the Valley Hospital, St. Joseph’s Health System, Blue Shield, Kaiser, United Way of the Bay Area and tobacco settlement funds from the county, Contributions from First 5 Napa County, funded by the Proposition 10 tobacco tax; will last through a fourth year.
Staff will write grants to continue the program, Diel said. Most of the funds will pay for premiums for the Healthy Kids Program.