| Remarks by Governor Kulongoski |
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| June 15, 2006 |
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National Assembly of School Based Health Centers Conference
Thank you Bruce for your generous introduction, and for your great leadership of the National Assembly of School-Based Health Centers.
Children and families need a strong voice back in Washington, and thanks to you, President-elect Kate Conway, John Schlitt – and all of your staff – we have one. I also want to acknowledge offer a special thanks to Nancy Stevens of Kaiser Permanente; our own Maxine Proskurowski and Tammy Alexander; and Teri Wright of the Kellogg Foundation.
Teri – I know how supportive Kellogg has been of Oregon’s school-based health centers. We’re now a national leader in making schools the intersection where kids and health care meet. But we couldn’t do it without help from our friends in the health care industry – and private foundations. Keeping our children healthy is a shared responsibility that brings shared benefits. So I thank you – and hope that you will continue to be our partner as we look for new ways to give every Oregon child, up to age nineteen, access of affordable and quality health care.
In the spirit of kids who like their visits to the doctor to be short – I’m going to keep my remarks brief today. But I do want to talk for a few minutes about the importance of school-based health services in Oregon, and about my vision for a health care landscape that gives every Oregon child the chance to answer the question that every doctor and nurse is trained to ask: “Where does it hurt?.”
There are 117,000 kids in Oregon who do not have health insurance. And that is 117,000 too many. That’s why I am determined to make sure that every child in Oregon has access to both physical and mental health care. I call my vision the Healthy Kids Plan – and it will meet the health care needs of Oregon’s children in three ways.
First – the plan will provide affordable insurance to children in families that make too much money to qualify for programs that are already offered by the state.
Second – the plan will increase funding to reach out to kids and families that do qualify for state supported health insurance but are not enrolled. A lack of good information by parents must never be the reason for a lack of good health care coverage for Oregon’s children.
And third – my Healthy Kids Plan includes approximately 2-million dollars in new funding to continue the expansion of Oregon’s school-based health centers – and to sustain the 45 centers that we already have.
I used to be the Insurance Commissioner in Oregon. One thing that experience taught me is that having insurance is no guarantee of access to health care. That’s why even as we work to enroll more eligible children into our public insurance programs – school-based health centers will remain a critical part of my Healthy Kids Plan. And the reason is simple: Students are in school – so their health care should be in school too.
Bringing health care into our schools means that parents don’t have to take time off from work to bring their children to the doctor. And students don’t have to choose between missing school and missing an appointment with a health care professional.
Oregon has been investing in school-based health centers for two decades. Today we have 45 school-based health centers in 17 counties. And three more counties – Marion, Linn and Wheeler – are planning to open new centers in the next two years. In 2006, Oregon school-based health centers served nearly 18,000 students – with over 56,000 visits. School-based health centers also have a great return on investment. For every one dollar that is spent from the state’s General Fund, three to four dollars are leveraged through local public-private partnerships.
These numbers prove how important – and effective – school-based health centers are in Oregon. But here’s the most important number of all: 71-percent of the 18,000 students I just mentioned reported that without the center they would not have gotten the health care they needed. That’s why we need more investment in school-based health centers, and more support for school-based health centers from the Legislature, the private sector, and most of all – the public.
This is simply the right thing to do. I believe that it is morally unacceptable for any child – anywhere – not to have access to health care. So, as Governor, I will make my Healthy Kids Plans one of my top legislative priorities next year. I want 2007 to be the beginning of new era – an era when no Oregon child goes without health care, and no Oregon parent worries about finding or affording that health care.
But school-based health centers – and the access to health care that they provide – do not just benefit children and their families. Healthy kids benefit all of us. There is plenty of research showing that children without health care do not do as well in school as covered children. Also, without health care, illnesses and injuries are left untreated – increasing reliance on expensive emergency room care that we all end up paying for in the form of higher insurance premiums.
And there are other economic and social costs that come with uninsured children. Children without primary care become sick, miss school, and require their parents to miss work in order to take care of them. This reduces productivity for workers, hurts businesses – and creates added financial strains on families. So there are plenty of reasons to congratulate each of you for leading the charge on school-based health clinics, and even more reasons for all of us to keep working, keep investing, and keep moving toward the day when children have the same right to good health that they now have to a good education. Thank you.
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