Editorial: A change for the better

Friday, July 2, 2004 | 8:21 a.m.

In all of the bitter fighting during the 2003 Legislature over taxes, a nice gesture went pretty much unheralded. In response to Gov. Kenny Guinn's goal of increasing Nevadans' access to health care, the Legislature eliminated a swath of red tape from a program for children and pregnant women. The change to the Child Health Assurance Program took effect Thursday, and will benefit as many as 2,000 needy children and women over the next year.

The program, funded through Medicaid, is available to pregnant women and those with small children whose household income is no more than 133 percent of the federal poverty level, or $12,382 a year. In the past, administrators postponed such health services as prenatal care until they had complied with time-consuming "asset tests." These were investigations of the applicants' personal circumstances, conducted to ensure they were truly poor. If a woman had $2,000 or more worth of assets, outside of her car or other essentials, she was barred from the program. With many of the women having incomes actually falling below the poverty level, the asset tests were generally a waste of time and definitely a barrier to timely health care.

With the asset tests now abolished, it's estimated that state Welfare Division administrators will have time to process an additional 138 cases a month. Less red tape, more people being helped -- this is the kind of thinking we'd like to see applied to all government social programs.