| Remarks by Governor Kulongoski |
|
|
 |
| January 22, 2007 |
|
Governor's Testimony on Healthy Kids
Representative Greenlick, Senator Monnes-Anderson, members of the House and Senate Health Care Committees. To begin, let me thank you for your commitment to make health care more affordable, more accessible and more effective for all Oregonians. Your positions on these committees and your presence here this morning are the best testimony for the opportunity before us.
All of us have been working for years to create this moment, when we can begin to apply the resources and leadership of our state to repair, improve and expand our health care system. I urge us all now to make the most of this opportunity.
Our health care system is failing us in many ways. Its worst failure is numbered in the tens of millions of Americans and hundreds of thousands in Oregon whom it treats as outsiders. These outsiders are largely unseen, except in hospital emergency rooms and public health clinics. And, then they are likely to be sicker than others, to get less care than others and to pay more for care when they get it than those who are the card-carrying members of our health care system.
The outsiders who don’t have those insurance cards number more than 600,000 in Oregon. They are our friends and neighbors, colleagues and customers. They don’t talk about being uninsured, except when the worst happens. And that’s when we are reminded that they are more vulnerable than the rest of us -- both physically and financially.
Worst of all, 117,000 of these outsiders in Oregon are children.
These children are less likely to get preventive health services, less likely to get medical or dental care when they need it, and less likely to learn and thrive as they grow up.
Most of these 117,000 children live in families with one or more working adults. In all but a few exceptional cases, these children are not neglected. They are the children of our working families, whose parents are struggling to make ends meet and whose employers are either unable or unwilling to pay for health insurance for their employees’ children.
And so their children become outsiders, whose development becomes less certain, whose progress becomes less sure, whose very lives become more vulnerable.
It is a tragedy to have children live without access to health care when there is little we can do about it. But it is worse when we can do something about it and we choose not to do so. This is the moment at which we have that choice.
Thanks to the leadership of Senator Monnes-Anderson, who has introduced a similar bill in the Senate. Thanks to Representative Greenlick, who chairs this House Committee. Thanks to Representative Kotek, who co-chaired our Medicaid Advisory Committee and held hearings on this subject across the state. And thanks to all of you who contributed your best thinking on this issue.
We have developed a proposal that can bring those 117,000 children into our health care system. Our Healthy Kids Plan is sensible, responsible and practical.
Sensible, because it uses federal funds for children’s health care that we are currently leaving on the table in Washington, D.C.
Currently, we’re leaving tens of millions of dollars unclaimed in the federal budget every year, because we’re not yet all of the matching funds for children’s health care that the federal government has set aside for us. For every new dollar that you commit to health care for children from lower-income families, there’s at least another dollar-fifty available from the federal government to purchase health care services in our local economy. Our proposal claims every penny of that money for Oregon children.
Further, about half of our 117,000 uninsured children are eligible for free enrollment in the Oregon Health Plan, but we haven’t reached out to enough of them, their parents haven’t signed them up and, if they did, we wouldn’t have the money to pay our share for their coverage.
Our proposal pays for coverage for every one of these children, with a dollar from our own resources and a dollar-fifty from the federal government. In addition, we will make it easier for families to enroll their children in the Healthy Kids Plan and easier to keep them enrolled.
Second, our proposal is responsible.
When working families can afford to pay a portion of their health care costs, it is reasonable to ask those families to do so. But it is also reasonable for us to help those families by supplementing their payments to make coverage available to their children. This is the principle of shared responsibility that informs our proposal.
It is important to meet the needs of the poorest among us, as many or our social programs are designed to do. But it is also important to match the efforts of middle-class working families, who often earn just a little too much to qualify for help from their government. Some 50,000 of Oregon’s uninsured children are in families who earn between $40,000 and $80,000 a year. We can meet them halfway and put health care for their children within their reach.
Third, our proposal is practical.
It is one thing to cover children; it’s another thing to make sure they get care. Our Healthy Kids Plan does both. It will provide a common health insurance card to every enrolled child. And, it will expand our school-based health centers and bring more dental sealant services to children in their schools.
Your Revenue Committees heard testimony from my staff last week of how to fund this plan. And you will hear from my advisors on Wednesday on the details of how we plan to administer it.
I’d like to close with these final points.
One, like you, I am committed to a long-term, permanent solution to our health care crisis that provides affordable health care for all Oregonians – and all Americans. That is a noble goal. But it is a goal that requires far more complicated and difficult solutions than the proposal before you.
We must not let our pursuit of that larger goal distract us from enacting this proposal. And, we must not keep our children waiting any longer.
I am not suggesting that we abandon one goal to pursue another – we can move forward on both paths. I believe that if we can cover all children, we can eventually cover all adults.
There is no conflict in our purposes here. We can do this for our children and make real progress on the road to health care for all. But if we fail with a proposal that is as sensible, responsible and practical as this one, I fear that we will end up no better off than we are now – with a growing number of outsiders, among both the children and adults of our working families, who are denied the health care that they need to grow and thrive and be productive members of our society.
Let us do this for our children. We are the adults in this society. It is our responsibility to look out for the health and well being of our children.
We can end the tragedy of 117,000 Oregon children whose futures are more vulnerable because they have become outsiders in our health care system. We can bring them inside, give them care when they need it, protect their health and help them thrive.
Let us not fail to act on this opportunity; let us not turn our backs on our children.
Again, I appreciate your efforts to address our growing health care crisis, and I thank you for taking up our Healthy Kids Plan at the start of this legislative session. I look forward to seeing this plan move forward through both chambers now so that we can bring affordable health care to all of our children.
Thank you.
|
|
| |
|
|
