Panel Spurns Health Care Funds But Batt Fights To Save Insurance For Poor Children

Matthew Hagele, 17, was one of thousands of Idaho children who had fallen through the cracks of health insurance coverage.

His father signed him up a month ago for a new state program that’s designed to extend Medicaid coverage to poor kids like Matthew.

On Friday, the Kamiah youth was running through the woods, horsing around with friends, when he accidentally injured the back of his throat with a stick. The wound became infected, his throat swelled up and he came down with a high fever. So Tuesday, his dad took him to a doctor.

“I would have kept him at home if it hadn’t been covered,” said Ken Hagele, a mechanic who relies on disability payments for raising his four children as a single parent.

But Matthew and children like him once again might lose out on health care.

As Matthew was visiting the doctor Tuesday, legislative budget writers voted to block the type of medical coverage he had enjoyed for just one day.

Medical care for thousands of children from working poor families could be in jeopardy in an apparent turf battle with Gov. Phil Batt.

The Joint Finance-Appropriations Committee voted 12-4 to withhold $2 million in state matching money and return more than $7.7 million the federal government gave Idaho last fall to get health services to more than 12,000 poor children.

Senate Finance Chairman Atwell Parry, R-Melba, expressed concern that such an ambitious program would be started “without any legislative input.”

But Batt, who tapped cash saved from welfare reform to match the federal money, was not standing for the decision. Within an hour, a bipartisan panel of four budget committee members was named to reassess the earlier decision.

“I can’t imagine that any of us would not want to avail ourselves of the opportunity to provide health care for these poor children, who are in need,” Batt declared. “I will vigorously pursue a course that will protect these monies.”

He declined to say whether he would veto the bill should it reach his desk.

The lone House Democrat on the committee, Ken Robison of Boise, was the Republican governor’s strongest defender, calling the GOP majority’s vote “a slap in the face of our chief executive” and accusing the majority of “pulling the rug out from under working families and children.”

The Idaho Citizen’s Network, a grassroots group that lobbies for the poor, also criticized the decision.

“JFAC, quite frankly, is playing politics with our children,” said Kevin Borden, organizing director for the network. “Those kids on the program right now are in limbo.”

The federal money, he said, “was the best match we’ve seen for any public assistance program.”

As of the end of January, more than 1,000 children had been enrolled in the program. Another 12,000 are thought to be eligible, said Mary Anne Saunders, deputy director of the state Department of Health and Welfare.

North Idaho has 161 children enrolled in the program, about half of them in in Kootenai County, according to the agency. The program was getting better known. In January alone, North Idaho’s caseload grew by 45.

Supporting Batt with Robison were Republican Reps. Hod Pomeroy of Boise and Don Pischner of Coeur d’Alene, and GOP Sen. John Hansen of Idaho Falls.

“I felt some thought had gone into this at the executive level and the agency level,” Pischner explained. “The program was already in effect.”

Sen. Stan Hawkins, R-Ucon, said that in three decades in state legislative politics, Batt should have understood that he was risking legislative rejection when he launched a program without clearing it with lawmakers first.

Batt started the child health care program last Oct. 1 when the state got its share of the federal money Congress and President Clinton earmarked in the 1997 Balanced Budget Act to expand medical care beyond the 42,000 children current covered by Medicaid.

He opted to get the cash out to children as quickly as possible by just expanding the Medicaid program to include children as old as 18 whose families have incomes up to 60 percent higher than the federal poverty level. For a family of three that would be $21,300 a year.

But he plans to set up a special committee this spring to decide whether the $16 million a year from the federal government and Idaho’s $4 million annual match could be more efficiently used in a private insurance program targeted at the same children.

To keep costs under control, the administration declined to adopt the federal guidelines that would allow another 19,000 Idaho children in families with incomes between 60 percent and 100 percent more than the poverty level to qualify.

Rep. JoAn Wood, R-Rigby, who proposed withholding the $2 million in state matching money for this budget year, maintained she did not want to kill the program but only give lawmakers time to assess it - and contain it if necessary.

But Robison contended that underneath all the qualifying comments made by the majority, “the signal will be fairly clear. The committee wants to eliminate this program.”

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Susan Drumheller Staff writer The Associated Press contributed to this report.