BlogWood: MT Archives

Leg cares less

Last year, the Florida Legislature made it very difficult to enroll in the KidCare state insurance program for poor children. See, there was a waiting list, so many poor kids could not get the insurance, and that made lawmakers look heartless and cheap. So, to solve the problem, our wise leaders decided to simply get rid of the waiting list and also discourage folks from trying to enroll in the first place.

Not surprisingly, these measures did nothing to actually solve the problem: there are more uninsured kids in Florida today than a few years ago, and now we learn that the KidCare program has become so difficult to get into that it is literally awash in cash because it doesn’t have enough enrollees to service.

Concerned about plummeting numbers of children covered by the state's KidCare health insurance program, a growing number state leaders say that new laws limiting enrollment were a mistake.

The numbers of children covered by the program, which provides low-cost insurance to families who make too much to qualify for Medicaid but can't afford private insurance, has dropped from a peak of 350,000 last year to about 245,000 March 1.

The state has budgeted $531 million for the program, enough to pay health-care expenses for 398,000 children. But so few children are enrolling that Florida may have to return federal money already allocated.

After a waiting list ballooned, legislators made changes to the program in the hope of controlling costs and preventing fraud. They replaced the original application form with a tougher version, required families to provide more proof of income and shortened the enrollment period from year-round to two months each year.

But the first enrollment period, which ended in January, added only 9,300 children to the program. A whopping 78 percent of applications were rejected initially because families did not fill them out properly or provide enough information.

Though those numbers will improve as staff process applications and get better documents from families, legislators fear that attempts to cap enrollment worked too well.

On Tuesday, the Senate Health Care Committee voted unanimously to advance a bill that would again allow families to apply for the program at any time of year.

The House is considering a similar measure, and both have some bipartisan support. Gov. Jeb Bush is studying KidCare enrollment numbers and considering different ways to enroll as many children as possible without overspending, spokesman Jacob DiPietre said.

A 2004 study by the University of Florida estimated the number of uninsured children in the state at 533,000. The poorest qualify for Medicaid, but many children of working families don't.

And even as the state expects to return up to $146.5 million in unspent money to the federal government, families are making hard choices and facing mounting medical debts.

Why does the GOP hate families and kids?