Earlier this month, California Assembly Bill 1422 – a bill to literally save 600,000 low-income children from being dis-enrolled from Healthy Families insurance – passed in both the State Senate and Assembly.  The bill provides $97 million for Healthy Families, which will be combined with a generous $81.4 million contribution from First 5 California, to ensure hundreds of thousands of children continue to receive health coverage for at least another year. The Governor has also issued a statement saying he will sign it.
We at United Way of the Bay Area are extremely proud of this result. Our public policy team and United Ways around the state worked hard over the past few months to achieve this outcome. Our efforts included:
• Recruiting business and community leaders to act as advocates by educating them about the crisis, which was deepened by budget cuts.
• Educating members of the legislature – through personal visits, letters, and emails — about the importance of children’s health and how coverage leads to better health, as well as improved academic performance.
• Keeping Healthy Families cuts in the news through placement of op-eds and Letters to the Editor in several newspapers.
• Direct advocacy with First 5 California and the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board, which advises the Governor and the Legislature on strategies for reducing the number of uninsured persons in the state.
• The week before Labor Day was the final push: United Ways and our volunteer advocates contacted many key legislators, some several times, right before the critical vote.
The campaign to cover all of California’s kids is far from over – far too many are still uninsured – but United Way is proud of the role we played this summer in keeping kids covered.
Now is the time to work on a permanent solution for the health of California’s kids. If you’d like to help, you can join United Way to:
-Â Thank your assembly member, state senator, and the governor for passing AB 1422.
-Â Ask them to make sure the solution is made permanent in 2010.
-Â Ask them to expand the Healthy Families and MediCal programs to serve all eligible children in California.
Join us as a community advocate in 2010. Let us know if you’re available to make calls, write letters, meet with elected leaders, enlist your friends and network, or help in other ways. Contact United Way’s VP of Community Investment Lorne Needle at lneedle@uwba.org or 415-808-7354.
Photo by Ellie Van Houtte. Used under Creative Commons license.
