Youth Medicaid debated j
By Joy Ludwig
Staff Reporter
Lincoln pediatrician Dr. Stacie
Bleicher would have liked the chance to
help a little girl.
But the high costs of medical care
and insurance kept the girl away from
the doctor’s office for nearly seven
years.
The result: an undetected inflamed
kidney that couldn’t be saved.
“They (youth) need to have a med
ical home, and they need to have med
ical care,” Bleicher told the Health and
Human Services Committee
Wednesday in favor of a bill that would
provide $101 million to establish a chil
dren’s Medicaid system in the state.
LB 1063 would provide the funds
over the next five years to establish a
Medicaid system that would cover chil
dren up to age 19 who are in families at
or below 185 percent of the federal
poverty guidelines.
It also would provide assistance to
an estimated 24,000 of 30,000 children
in Nebraska who currently do not have
any or adequate medical insurance.
The money would come from
Congress’s Balanced Budget Act of
1997, which sets aside $76 million over
the next five years as long as each state
matches those funds with $25 million.
Sen. Chris Beutler of Lincoln, who
introduced the bill, said there were three
i
M
First, I believe every child deserves good
health care. It’s obviously not the child’s
fault they ’re not getting it.’’
Chris Beutler
senator
main reasons why the bill was important
and how it would help die state.
“First, I believe every child deserves
good health care,” he said. “It’s obvious
ly not the child’s fault they’re not getting
it”
Secondly, Beutler said the money
would help keep Nebraska’s economy
strong. Finally, he said he believed the
adults in the low-income bracket who
work hard deserve adequate health care
available to them, too.
As an example of the current med
ical care problem, Beutler said a single
parent family with an income of
$ 19,380 a year has only $351 for discre
tionary expenditures to divide among
such things as children’s health insur
ance, savings and retirement funds.
However, he said parents usually
don’t have enough money to buy ade
quate insurance premiums and leftover
income is spent on other necessities.
“As you can see, most families at
this level cannot afford health insur
ance,” Beutler said.
--
Thirty-four other Nebraska senators
have pledged support for the bill.
Gov. Ben Nelson said he thought the
bill would improve the health care of
low-income families and provide a
higher quality of life to diem.
“It must be viewed as an investment
in our society and an investment in
them,” Nelson said. However, Omaha
Sen. Jim Jensen said he was concerned
about what would happen after five
years - the time allotted for states to
receive federal funds.
Deb Thomas, policy secretary at the
Department of Health and Human
Services, said one of the key elements
of the program deals with outreach to
the children, called Kid’s Connection,
“Reaching For a Healthy Future.”
As part of the program, Thomas
said people would have to work with
schools, pediatricians and community
action agencies to find out names of the
children who need medical assistance
because the Department, of Education
cannot provide such a list
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