Riordan Crosses Lines for Sake of Kids’ Health

Medi-Cal and other providers of health care for poor children are under the control of state and county agencies. So what was Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan doing Tuesday when he established a city commission to improve delivery of health care to children? The answer to that question, asked by some regional officials, is: exactly the right thing.

The mayor’s Commission on Healthy Kids is intended to circumvent, and unclog, the existing official channels. For the sad fact is that in recent years the county and state have not so much been planning for the region’s future health care needs as doing damage control after health care problems escalated into crises. For instance, as many as 700,000 children in Los Angeles County now lack medical insurance, even though about 300,000 of them are eligible for coverage under Medi-Cal, the state’s health insurance program for the poor.

As in his initiatives on behalf of schools, Riordan is seeking to use his influence despite a lack of official authority. The panel--a virtual Who’s Who in California health care--has the clout to ameliorate some problems and to assure good use of new federal money for children’s health care. The commission should:

* Bring into the fold children who are eligible for but not receiving Medi-Cal. A study by UCLA and the Rand Corp. indicated that many Latino parents were scared off by the anti-immigrant rhetoric that led to passage of Proposition 187. The panel could counteract the rhetoric and work with community organizations in locating eligible children.

* Identify existing programs that have proven their ability to reach out to underserved children. A good model is California Kids, which uses public school nurses to help identify children from families with too much income to qualify for Medi-Cal but too little to afford insurance. Then, using $25 million in philanthropic contributions, it has managed to provide comprehensive health care to 10,000 who would otherwise have gone without it.

* Ensure that the $16 billion to $24 billion that Congress is expected to send the states for children’s health care reaches those who need it most. While Washington legislators have been celebrating their largess to children, they have been slashing away at other federal health care funding. One proposal would cut more than $1 billion that has gone annually to California hospitals that provide the highest percentage of care for the uninsured.

Current plans in Congress would allow governors to use the new children’s health care funding to make up for other federal funding shortfalls. The mayor’s commission could farsightedly ensure that these dollars are used in Los Angeles for their originally intended purpose: to extend quality health care to the growing numbers of children who lack it.