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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Child Health Experts: Healthcare Reform Helping WV Kids

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Thursday, January 27, 2011   

CHARLESTON, W.Va. - While Congress debates changing the health-care reform passed last spring, many people familiar with children's health issues say parts of the new law already are helping youngsters in West Virginia.

Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus, a bipartisan children's advocacy group, points to a study by Johns Hopkins University that found uninsured children are 60 percent more likely to die if they have to be admitted to the hospital. He says health-care reform helps address that problem by, among other things, eliminating co-payments for preventive care.

"Low-income families wait too long sometimes to take their kid to the doctor because they're worried about the co-payment, and then the kid ends up in the emergency room. In West Virginia now, you don't have to pay a co-payment for preventive services, immunizations, those kinds of important services for children."

Lesley says the insurance reforms in the new law are having a huge impact. He says there are children with serious illnesses who in the past would have used up their lifetime insurance benefits before becoming adults.

"The child in Children's Hospital in Denver who had childhood cancer, by the age of 8 had reached their lifetime cap. For the rest of their lives."

The reform strengthens the State Children's Health Insurance Program, extending authorization by six years and funding by two. Lesley says that program should not be endangered, especially since it was so important as families lost coverage during the economic downturn.

"In West Virginia, that played an important role as people were having troubles, and at least for children it was able to make sure that those kids continued to get the health-care services they need."

Critics of the reform say it will increase government health-care budgets, but Lesley says the shift to preventive care will save money. The Congressional Budget Office says the reform will save $143 billion by 2019.


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