Fixing A System Where Children Die For Lack of Health Coverage

May 18, 2007 by The Baltimore Sun | Fixing A System Where Children Die For Lack of Health Coverage | by Clarence Page

WASHINGTON — Residents in and around the nation’s capital woke up one recent morning to the sort of bad news that we like to think doesn’t happen in America: A child died from lack of dental care. Deamonte Driver, a seventh-grader in Prince George’s County, died Feb. 25. Bacteria from an abscessed tooth had spread to his brain, doctors said. Two operations and eight weeks of care and therapy failed to save him. Total cost: more than $250,000.

His mother, Alyce Driver, worked at low-wage jobs. She did not have health insurance. Between her struggles to get coverage and wide cracks in Maryland’s public health-care system, her child never got the $60 tooth extraction that would have saved his life.
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Some children get caught without coverage because their parents must constantly reapply for it, even when they stay in the same state. Others are trapped in the gap when state Medicaid eligibility levels or the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program levels are too low and private insurance too expensive. That $40 billion, 10-year program, commonly known as SCHIP, is up for reauthorization. The program provided health-care coverage for an estimated 6 million children who otherwise would not have been covered. States are free to design their programs, helped by federal grants and subsidies.

There’s a good chance the program will be reauthorized at current funding levels, insiders say. But with health costs skyrocketing, that would be, in effect, a cut. ...