California Misses Chance for Extra Kids’ Health Funding (CA)

December 28, 2010

Children’s advocates bemoaned California’s failure Monday to win a share of at least $206 million in federal funding meant to reward states that took aggressive steps to enroll eligible children in government health programs.

California missed its target of enrolling 352,000 additional children – falling about 24,000 shy – in Healthy Families and Medi-Cal, the state’s Medicaid program. As a result, the state lost out on what certainly would have been millions of dollars in federal aid.

Fifteen states shared in the performance bonuses announced Monday by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

"We’ve done a good job, but we needed to do a little bit better," said said Judy Darnell, director of public policy at United Ways of California.

"It is really tragic that we lost out on an opportunity to provide health coverage to more California children, especially when there’s no reason California couldn’t have earned a performance bonus," she said.

About 700,000 uninsured California children are eligible for state and federal programs but are not enrolled, according to the Urban Institute.

Earlier this year, the federal government challenged states to enroll 5 million additional children in Medicaid, known as Medi-Cal in California, and in Children’s Health Insurance Programs such as Healthy Families.

In all, the state has about 1.5 million children without medical coverage, according to researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Efforts to insure more children in California have been stymied by budget cuts, children’s advocates said.

In recent years, more than $34 million in state funding for outreach and education programs was lost to budget cuts.

Last year, lack of funds prompted the elimination of certified application aides who helped families navigate the application process for public insurance programs.

"The winning states face tough budgets just like we do, but they recognized that in hard times it is more important than ever to cover uninsured kids," Darnell said.

California met the minimum standards required for the financial incentive – it made it easier for families to get and keep coverage – but could not meet the target increase for Medi-Cal enrollment.

"Given how close we were, it is truly tragic that the state … lost out on federal funds," said Suzanne Shupe, executive director of California Children Health Initiatives.