Editorial: Covering kids or moving backward?

12/12/2005

Star Tribune Editorial
Last update: December 9, 2005 at 4:43 PM

Between 1996 and 2004, something remarkable happened in the nation’s health care system. The number of adults without health insurance went up and up, yet the number of uninsured children went down and down.

Using an innovative federal program known as S-CHIP, the nation’s governors extended medical insurance coverage to some 4 million children, and the percentage of kids without insurance plummeted.

In Minnesota during that same period, something equally remarkable was happening: The share of poor children without health insurance was going up. In fact, Minnesota was one of only nine states where the percentage of low-income children lacking health insurance went up between 1996 and 2004.

While the percentage of poor children without coverage dropped 21 percent nationally, in Minnesota it rose by 11 percent.

These numbers are contained in a sweeping new study from Georgetown University, but they will come as no surprise to anyone who has watched Gov. Tim Pawlenty and the Legislature these last three years.

By insisting that Minnesota fix its budget deficit without raising taxes, they had to make dramatic cuts in the state’s health care system—chiefly Medical Assistance for poor families and MinnesotaCare for the working poor—and in so doing they whittled away steadily at a system that had made Minnesota a national leader.

While the governor and the Legislature focused on adults, the state’s own forecasts showed that several thousand children would lose coverage they otherwise would have had.

State officials say their own data, using a different and more accurate survey, show a lower rate of uninsurance than the Georgetown study and a steady increase in the number of children on public programs. But the Georgetown study suggests that this expansion still was not enough to keep pace with need at a time of rising poverty rates, or to keep up with other states.

As lawmakers debated changes to Medical Assistance and MinnesotaCare, Republicans argued that Minnesota was so far ahead of other states that they could squeeze and squeeze and still leave their state a leader.

Well, not quite. The Georgetown study shows that Minnesota remains slightly above average in covering low-income kids, but that it has slipped from No. 7 to No. 22. That is to say, behind states such as Alabama, Arkansas, Maine, Nebraska, South Carolina, Wyoming and Michigan.

This isn’t just about bragging rights among states, or even compassion for the poor. Health insurance for children is an indicator of a state’s long-term thinking and capacity to innovate.

Research shows that children with health insurance are more likely to have regular doctor visits, less likely to miss school, less apt to suffer complications from ailments such as asthma and ear infections, and less likely to develop chronic diseases as they age.

When a state insures its children, it is insuring its future. It’s time for Minnesota to stop thinking of these children as a liability and remember that they are an asset.

Of course it’s good to see Minnesota’s budget back in the black after three years of arduous work at the Legislature. But it’s misleading and shortsighted to say that Minnesota hasn’t suffered because of the choices lawmakers made.