Alameda County First in the Nation to Recruit and Enroll Uninsured Children

Alameda County District 3 , who represents San Lorenzo and serves as the board's health chair, announced Wednesday that Alameda County will be the first county in the nation to actively recruit and enroll uninsured children eligible for publicy funded health insurance.

Chan's announcement, made during a press conference at La Clinica de la Raza in Oakland, was in response to a 2010 challenge, Connecting Kids to Coverage, laid out by federal Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. 

It's estimated that nearly five million children who are uninsured in the U.S. are eligible for Medicaid and CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program) but are not enrolled. In Alameda County that number is 13,000 children.

When longtime health administrator David Sayen, Regional Administrator of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services for California, Arizona, Nevada, Hawaii and Pacific Territories, first heard Sebelius' challenge, he thought it was impossible.

“That's crazy,” he said at the press conference. “You can't do that.”

But, Sayen said, people thought Kennedy's pledge to get to the moon was crazy too, and he's confident that, based on the commitment from local health officials, this challenge will be met.

Speaking about some of his experiences in his 18 years of working at La Clinica de la Raza in Fruitvale, pediatrician John Pescetti, M.D. said he often sees a patient's symptoms deteriorate further because families can't afford the medicine he has prescribed.

“Seven thousand dollars are saved [to taxpayers] for every emergency visit avoided,” said Anthony Wright, the executive director for Health Access, a statewide healthcare advocacy group.

About half of the 17,504 uninsured children in Alamada County are between the ages of 11 and 17, according to the 2009 California Health Interview Survey. An estimated 45 percent of those children are Hispanic.

To meet this challenge, Chan outlined a three-pronged strategy:

1. Beefing up outreach efforts through partnerships with well-connected community groups.

2. Eliminating a lot of the red tape that often prevents families from enrolling their children.

3. Improving technology use, specifically by adopting a successful online application program that has worked in other counties called One E-App, to allow families to enroll their children online.

A large number of the uninsured children who are eligible for health coverage were previously on health plans but fell off, Chan said. A big part of this challenge is convincing parents of the value of health coverage and retaining children in their health plans, she said.

In her remarks, Chan also affirmed the county's commitment to continue vision coverage for Alameda children despite possible cuts in funding in this year's budget.

As more municipalities join Alameda County in Sebelius' Connecting Kids to Coverage Challenge, ideas and new approaches to outreach and enrollment will be put up on insurekidsnow.gov, according to a thank you letter written by Sebelius to Supervisor Chan, that Chan provided.

Chan said the goal is to meet this challenge by 2014, when the bulk of the healthcare reforms will take effect. “I do hope that you will come back to us and hold us accountable on this,” she told reporters. 

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