Health plan ills stall aid for children

Thursday, June 25, 1998 | 2:53 a.m.

And setting up a new, Medicaid-type program - one solution being examined by state lawmakers - could reduce the number of children covered and delay coverage until October, said Sen. Ray Rawson, R-Las Vegas, chairman of the Legislature's Health Care Committee.

"I'm dismayed. The flexibility envisioned in the legislation has been taken away," Rawson said Wednesday in discussing federal rejection of Nevada's initial plan to insure 45,000 children.

Check Up was planned under legislation allowing states flexibility in expanding health care coverage to uninsured children. It is a separate health plan that was to include dental, vision and pharmacy coverage.

Nevada simplified the application process to get as much participation as possible. Under the program, eligible families would be able to sign up with a participating health maintenance organization and begin receiving health care on July 1. Modest fees and copayments would be required.

But someone apparently forgot to tell the federal Health Care Financing Administration about the flexibility aspect of the program, which was lobbied into existence at the federal level in part by Gov. Bob Miller when he served last year as chairman of the National Governors' Association.

As a result of the agency's rejection, Rawson said the state will probably have to offer the health care to children through a program that mirrors Medicaid in virtually every respect.

The application process will be more complicated and intrusive, and the state may not be able to insure as many children, Rawson said.

Medicaid coverage costs the state about $2,600 for each enrolled person. The Check Up program was expected to provide coverage at a cost of $1,400 a year or less per child.

The other option would be to expand Medicaid, a health care plan for the poor, to encompass the higher-income families that would have been covered under Check Up, Rawson said.

Expanding Medicaid would provide health coverage for all eligible people, adults and children alike, while the Check Up program specifically targeted children.