1 in 6 Texas children lack healthcare

1/12/2010

          If you are a child in the United States without health insurance, there is a 1 in 6 chance you live in Texas.

Texas leads the nation in the number and percentage of uninsured children. In Tarrant County alone, nearly 100,000 or 22 percent of children are uninsured, a fact the Tarrant County CHIP Coalition is attempting to change.
Co-chairing the coalition are Sandy Lutz, a member at St. Stephen United Methodist Church in Arlington, and Walter Taylor, Your Texas Benefits manager with Mental Health Mental Retardation. It was Lutz’s commitment to this cause that inspired Rev. Mary Spradlin, pastor at St. Stephen UMC, to get involved.
St. Stephen hosted the coalition’s fourth program Jan. 9 to train volunteers to help parents and others in filing the necessary, and sometime cumbersome, forms for enrolling eligible children in the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and Children’s Medicaid. Both the insurance programs offer a wide range of services including regular checkups and dental care to keep kids healthy.
The two dozen volunteers at the recent application assistance training come from a variety of interests ranging from an elementary school principal and several active and retired teachers, members of the League of Women Voters, a staff member of Texas Senator Wendy Davis’ office, a University of Texas at Arlington masters student in social work, a physician, a healthcare underwriter and community volunteer members of Thompson’s Chapel United Methodist Church.
Through Rev. Spradlin’s program hosting, members of a number of United Methodist congregations in Tarrant County and nearby Parker County have undergone the training and many will be implementing application assistance events in their communities. Among those churches with trainees are St. Stephen, Trinity, Arlington First, Aldersgate and Davis United Methodist churches in Arlington, Everman, Colleyville, Azle, St. Paul Fort Worth, and Crowley. Several have come from the Weatherford area.
Most of the volunteers are driven by their concern for the plight of the uninsured children and their families. Others may be driven by the practical need to reduce the vicious cycle of escalating health insurance costs in Texas:
• The uninsured are forced to go to emergency rooms for critical health care.
• Hospital charity care increases.
• Hospitals, faced with increasing emergency costs, increase charges to insured patients to pay for the uninsured.
• As a result, private health insurance premiums increase.
• Workers drop coverage as insurance premiums increase.
• The numbers of uninsured increase.
• Larger numbers of uninsured begin the emergency room care cycle.
What is it like for the thousands of uninsured or underinsured children? More than half have no well-child or introductory-level illness and injury care, not even once a year. They are nine times more likely not to receive needed medical care, and most do not have a “medical home” or medical caregiver.
The Tarrant County CHIP Coalition and its partner organizations, which include a number of United Methodist churches, hope to build a healthy generation of children through an integrated approach that connects them with CHIP/Children’s Medicaid.
 Employer-sponsored coverage was already declining in Texas and nationwide, even before the recession. CHIP/Children’s Medicaid will fill the coverage gap with federal dollars. With that, Texas pays 39 cents for every dollar of coverage for Children’s Medicaid, and 27 cents for every dollar of coverage for CHIP.
Anyone interested in training to provide application assistance at an enrollment event should contact Rev. Mary Spradlin at mary.spradlin@yahoo.com or 817-460-8655. Contact the coalition at tarrantcountychip@yahoo.com for other volunteer opportunities:
• Host and enrollment event at your church.
• Set up an enrollment event with a local business.
• Help recruit volunteers to staff an enrollment event.
• Distribute event flyers in your church, workplace or volunteer organization.
• Become a coalition members.
• Advocate for CHIP to your elected officials.