The gift of a healthy future

It was easier than sending 38,000 Valentines.

On Feb. 14, the state Senate passed a bill to bring health insurance to 38,000 children. Senate Democrats made the promise two years ago to cover all of Washington’s kids by 2010, and we are well on our way to keeping that commitment.

Senate Bill 5093 would consolidate three programs now operated by the state Department of Social and Health Services (DSHS) into one. This would create a seamless health coverage system for all children younger than 19 with family incomes at or below 250 percent of the federal poverty level.

Right now, kids across the state don’t have medical homes — one place for primary care and well-child visits, and for referrals to specialty care when it’s needed. Their medical home is actually a room — the emergency room. And if you think a doctor’s appointment is expensive, you haven’t had an urgent problem lately. By the time kids are seen in an emergency room, the problem can be very expensive to treat. Even routine problems are costly when treated there.

When the uninsured seek emergency room care, we all bear the costs. The issue has another dimension: Children from families that get their medical services from emergency rooms come to depend on that costly care instead of routine visits to a primary care doctor.

We must invest wisely as well as humanely. This bill would require performance measures for pediatric service rate increases to make sure we tie spending to better outcomes for kids.

Last year, 73,000 of Washington’s children had no health-care coverage. With the passage of this bill, we can reduce this appalling number by nearly half. It’s a great way to show how much Senate Democrats care about our future.