viernes, 30 de septiembre de 2005
Kids health care gets a booster shot
By Jay Goetting, Register Staff Writer
The uninsured children of Napa County are a step closer to having health care coverage, thanks to action by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday.
The Children's Health Initiative being spearheaded by the Napa County Child Care Planning Council received the board's guarantee of $100,000 a year for the next three years to augment other funding sources.
The goal of the initiative is to provide health coverage for all children not covered by private insurance or other health care programs such as Medi-Cal.
The county money will come from tobacco settlement funds. But unlike the funds it is seeking from other health-related agencies, the Children's Health Initiative will not have to go through a competitive process to receive its county allocation.The goal of the program is to provide health coverage for all children not covered by private insurance or other health care programs such as Medi-Cal.
The three-year proposal totals $1.5 million with additional money expected from QVH Health Care, First 5 Children and Families Commission and donations from the Napa Valley Vintners and other agencies.
In making the move, supervisors allocated the $100,000 directly from the Tobacco Master Settlement Agreement trust account, which now tops $6.3 million. During the past year, the county received $1.343 million in tobacco funds, which come as a result of a nationwide legal settlement that pitted states with escalating health care costs against tobacco giants that were blamed for those expenses.
The interest earned during the first three quarters of this past year was $97,315. It is the hope that eventually the trust fund will have enough money to operate like an endowment and fund the programs using only the interested generated.
It has been county policy in recent years to distribute $750,000 annually to health related nonprofit groups. Since the health initiative allocation would drop the remaining total to $650,000 for the next three years, the board agreed to put another $50,000 in the mix to bring it to $700,000.
That amount will be up for grabs by around Oct. 1 according to Meegan Condon, a management analyst in the county CEO's office.
Condon is working on the ground rules for this year's competition for the funds.
Some agencies in the 46 states receiving tobacco settlement funds are using the money for general purposes, but Napa County has continued to support health-related causes.
Since 2001, Napa County has awarded $3 million to 15 nonprofit agencies.