California's performance in providing healthcare to children slipped in 2008 and as many as 1 million children in the state could be without health insurance this year, a leading children's advocacy group reports in its annual report card released today.
In its 2009 report, Children Now says the state's grade for providing healthcare to children slipped from a C to a D-plus last year, largely the result of additional paperwork requirements for Medi-Cal recipients and premium increases for low-income families who enroll their children in the Healthy Families program.
With the state facing an even more severe budget shortfall this year, policymakers must take whatever steps are necessary to protect children's services from draconian cuts, said Children Now President Ted Lempert.
"We get how tough things are," Lempert said.
"But you have to put kids' health-care and education at the end of the list of things you cut. Education and children have been on the short end for a long, long time."
The report calls on lawmakers to set budget priorities that provide for "efficient investments in children" by expanding healthcare to cover all children, spending more on early childhood development, improving K-12 education and expanding after-school programs.
Lempert said that agenda may be ambitious as the state struggles to close a projected $40 billion budget shortfall over the next 18 months, but the priority of lawmakers must be to put children's concerns first.
"Not going backwards is the first goal, and that's going to be pretty tough," he said.
Lempert noted the budget proposal released by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's administration last week calls for deep cuts in education, including an option that would allow local school districts to shorten the 2009-10 academic year by up to five days.
"A shorter school year flies totally in the face of what all the research shows, which is that you need to be providing more time in school, not less," he said. "We're 46th out of 50 in education spending, and if you adopt what's in the governor's proposal it's hard to imagine California won't drop to dead last."
Lempert holds out hope that progress can be made in children's healthcare this year, despite the state's fiscal challenges.
There is a good chance, he said, that under President-elect Barack Obama the federal government will increase its level of support for Medi-Cal and also work with Congress to adopt a "robust reauthorization" of the State Children's Health Insurance Program, which operates under the name Healthy Families in California.
In addition, he noted, newly installed Senate President Pro Tem Darrell Steinberg, D-Sacramento, has made universal children's healthcare a personal priority. "Sen. Steinberg's been an awesome champion on this," he said.
In addition to health coverage, the state's grade also slipped in one other area on the report card: asthma treatment and prevention, which slipped from a C-minus to a D-plus.
"The numbers are getting really scary," Lempert said. "There were 1.9 million school days missed as a result of asthma last year, and it now affects 15 percent of all California kids."
The report card showed improvement in two areas: dealing with obesity among adolescents, where the grade improved to a C-minus from a D-plus, and early childhood care and education, where the grade moved up to a C from a C-minus.
The report card grades the state's performance in 12 policy areas, awarding four B's, four C's and four D's. The highest grade was for after-school programs, for which the group gave the state a grade of B-plus. To see more of the Ventura County Star, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.venturacountystar.com. Copyright (c) 2009, Ventura County Star, Calif. Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services. For reprints, email tmsreprints@permissionsgroup.com, call 800-374-7985 or 847-635-6550, send a fax to 847-635-6968, or write to The Permissions Group Inc., 1247 Milwaukee Ave., Suite 303, Glenview, IL 60025, USA.
Copyright (C) 2009, Ventura County Star, Calif.