Panel recommends health care bill

OLYMPIA – State lawmakers clashed Wednesday over a proposal to add more low-income illegal immigrant children to state-paid health care.

“I do not believe we can blame the kids, whether they come here legally or illegally,” said House Health Care and Wellness Committee chairwoman Rep. Eileen Cody, D-Seattle.

Over the objections of some Republicans, the committee on Wednesday recommended approval of House Bill 1071 by the full House of Representatives. The plan is part of a larger proposal to combine several state health plans for children and cover tens of thousands more kids, both citizens and noncitizens. Sen. Chris Marr, D-Spokane, is sponsoring a similar bill in the Senate.

“Unless people can show me that kids have some way of choosing their parents, I maintain that kids are held harmless,” Marr said.

House Democrats said Wednesday that covering illegal immigrant children is a moral duty that also makes financial sense. After all, Cody said, the state must educate all children. Ensuring that they have preventative health care – and vaccinations to protect themselves and their peers – is a logical extension of that, she said.

Health insurance coverage for such kids now costs the state $119 a month per child, according to the state Department of Social and Health Services.

Some Republicans, however, argue that the state should look after citizen families before expanding coverage for illegal immigrant families.

“We have taxpaying citizens that have been in this country paying taxes all their life,” said Rep. Richard Curtis, R-Camas. “They need to be first in line.”

Republicans also worry about the cost of the rest of the bill, which would expand the state health insurance system to offer coverage for all children of families earning up to three times the poverty level by 2009. For a family of four, that works out to $60,000 a year. Below $40,000, the family would pay nothing for the coverage. Above that, they’d pay a sliding fee based on income.

“Let’s be careful here,” said Rep. Gary Alexander, R-Olympia, who said the still-unknown cost of the program could strip money from schools and other state responsibilities. “We do not want to establish another entitlement.”

Democratic leaders in Olympia – with a large majority in both houses of the Legislature – have set a goal of covering all children in the state by 2010. The bills started with a request from Gov. Chris Gregoire, who wants to add 32,000 more kids to state health coverage over the next two years.

“Sometimes we are willing to put our money where our mouths are. This is one of those cases,” said Rep. Shaw Schual-Berke, D-Normandy Park.

And it makes financial sense, both she and Marr said. For the dollars that taxpayers will spend anyway on a single emergency room crisis visit by an indigent child who didn’t get preventative care, Schual-Berke said, the state can pay for several years of health coverage.

“Kids are cheap to cover,” she said.

Washington has an estimated 600,000 residents who have no health coverage. Most – seven out of eight – are adults ages 19 to 64.

Still, that leaves an estimated 73,000 uninsured children.

Of those, no one knows how many are here illegally. Washington’s Children’s Health Program provides medical coverage for kids that federal law won’t let Medicaid cover. Those include illegal immigrants, legal immigrants who have been in the country less than five years, and people who are here legally but who don’t have the paperwork to prove it. The program covers 9,169 kids. State Department of Social and Health Services spokesman Jim Stevenson said the agency doesn’t know what percentage of those are illegal immigrants.

“Yes, it’s going to cost money,” said Rep. Tom Campbell, R-Roy, who broke with other Republicans at Wednesday’s hearing to vote in support of the bill. “It is money well spent.”