Editorial: A lost opportunity

Sunday, May 6, 2007 | 7:03 a.m.

W ith less than a month to go, it hardly is likely that the Nevada Legislature is going to take any sweeping steps toward providing health insurance coverage to the estimated 450,000 Nevadans who don't have any.

The Assembly Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday is scheduled to discuss Assembly Bill 168, which calls for expanding state subsidies that would provide health insurance access to pregnant women, small-business employees and children. But the measure would cover only about 12,000 additional people, just about half of whom would be children. More than 100,000 of Nevada's children - almost 17 percent of all children in the state - lack coverage.

As the Sun noted in a February editorial, at least a dozen other states are finding ways to vastly expand health coverage access. Lawmakers in states such as Massachusetts and California are working toward providing coverage for all, or nearly all, residents. Other states, such as Illinois and Pennsylvania, are focused on extending coverage to all children.

The delivery and funding of these programs varies, and certainly none of these fixes is quick or easy. Maine, for example, passed legislation in 2003 that called for universal coverage by 2009. But funding shortfalls in the Children's Health Insurance Program - which uses federal money to help states provide medical coverage for poor children - could derail Maine's deadline. Congress approved a little emergency funding in December, but it is not nearly enough to make up the difference. States ultimately must make up the deficit. Maine, which has a relatively sparse population, must find coverage for more than 3,200 children this summer.

Conservative Republicans say that government should not bear the burden of paying for people's medical insurance. But taxpayers and people who have health insurance already are paying for this care. For example, children who lack health insurance often are taken to emergency rooms instead of to a doctor's office when they are sick, which raises health care costs for everyone.

Nevada lawmakers have botched the opportunity this session to put our state on a meaningful path that would have more evenly spread out the responsibility of providing health care coverage.