Push underway to get more SC children signed up for government health care

COLUMBIA — Advocates want to find the more than 20 percent of South Carolina children who qualify for government health insurance but are not signed up and see to it that they are enrolled.

The federal government is challenging South Carolina and other states to find an estimated 5 million children across the country who are eligible for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, commonly known as CHIP. Nationally, an average of 18 percent of eligible children are not signed up for the insurance, although some states have enrollment as high as 95 percent. Only 55 percent of qualified children in Nevada are enrolled.

In South Carolina, children can qualify if they are part of a family of four in a household with a monthly income between $2,444 and $3,675.

“As long as any child in America is without health insurance, we shouldn’t be satisfied,” Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said today in a webcast about the Connecting Kids to Coverage Challenge.

The challenge seeks to enroll the 5 million eligible children in CHIP within five years. The webcast coincides with the release of a report by the Urban Institute that details the issues surrounding finding the children who qualify but aren’t enrolled.

The Post and Courier reported in 2008 that 16 months after the Legislature put up money to pay for 60,000 more children to be covered, only 7,000 more had enrolled. The program is known as South Carolina Healthy Connections Kids.

After the newspaper report, the state had amplified efforts to get more children signed up in recent years, but those efforts were scaled back when the budget situation worsened. The state Department of Health and Human Services did not provide any outreach efforts specifically tied to the start of school, which is seen as a good opportunity to help reach the children who qualify.

Sue Berkowitz, director of South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center, said South Carolina is not doing enough to help families access the care for their children. She noted that several other states, including Louisiana, have helped streamline the application and renewal processes for families while also conducting extensive outreach and educational campaigns.

“Sending children back to school without health coverage is particularly stressful for many families,” she said in a statement. “We want to help families overcome the barriers to enrolling in affordable health care coverage so they can do well in school and participate in youth sports without worrying about injuries.”

For more information on South Carolina Healthy Connections Kids, log on to http://www.scchoices.com/SCSelfService/en_US/kids.html or call 1-877-552-4642.

Read more in Saturday’s editions of The Post and Courier.