CHIP and Medicaid This article on Austin American Statesman’s website by Corrie MacLaggan reports on the unusually large percentage of people who qualify for CHIP and/or Medicaid yet do not take advantage of it. CHIP (Children’s Health Insurance Program) and Medicaid offer free (in the case of Medicaid) or extremely affordable health insurance to underprivileged children. According to this article there are currently about 850,000 Texas children who are eligible to receive CHIP and Medicaid benefits yet are not enrolled in either program. To help reach out to the families in need, call centers have been created and churches have been contacted to help spread the word. It seems as though these families who can not provide health care for their children to not know how truly important it is to have health care and do not know how accessible it is for them to get it. I think that Texans should do a better job in spreading this word to help more families. In the article they use the excuse that Texas is such a big state- it’s difficult to implement something on such a large scale. The size of Texas should not be used as any sort of excuse. If anything, the size of Texas should make it that much more important to help needy children who are not as fortunate as others. I think that we should send out CHIP and Medicaid representatives to these cities and towns where high percentages of the residents qualify for the programs. I think we should more actively seek out these people rather than just using call centers- which have a tendency to seem impersonal. It is a shame that there are programs created specifically to help all these people yet they might not have any idea they even qualify. Texas needs to help out its poor citizens to assure a brighter future.
3 comments:
I definitely agree that it is a true shame we can't find a better way to implement these health care benefits. It doesn't seem like it should be all that difficult. If all those people knew it was available, I'm sure they would be jumping at the chance to take advantage of it. They need to find a way to get the word out to EVERYBODY who needs it, not just a few areas. If they can't even inform the people who qualify, what good is it at all? It almost completely defeats the purpose of having it. If we can improve the health conditions of those at the poverty level, it might do wonders. It could make some poor people well enough to pursue further education or to find better jobs. It would improve quality of life which might just help them out of a downward spiral. I think health care is a very important issue and if so few people are benefiting from these kinds of programs, something should be done to change that.
Janna LaRocco
I also agree with Berlin. There is no reason why there are families out there that qualify for government support and do not take advantage of it. There is no excuse for there to be families that have no idea about the programs. It is the responsibility of the government to do everything within there power to educate families on the programs available to them. We live in a time now where we are very technologically advanced which makes it easy to communicate and inform people even over large areas. It is sad for the government to use an excuse such as Texas is very large so it makes it hard to inform everyone.
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