Doctors for Undocumented Kids
About 1,000 more undocumented children in Orange County will be getting free health care this spring, thanks to a consortium that aims to bolster the patchwork of coverage offered to low-income families.
The consortium includes hospitals, clinics and the Encino-based California Kids Foundation. The nonprofit group steps in where the state’s Healthy Families Program leaves off. California Kids insures some of the estimated 200,000 children whose parents cannot qualify for the state’s new health-insurance program because they are undocumented workers. These children don’t qualify even when their U.S.-born siblings are covered.
In Orange County, where there are 15,000 to 20,000 such children, some of the medical centers California Kids is working with are St. Joseph’s Hospital in Orange and Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach.
“If they are going to be tomorrow’s citizens, we have to make sure they are healthy citizens,” said Gwyn Perry, Hoag’s director of community medicine.
This week the program seemed heaven sent for one family at Children’s Hospital of Orange County, another facility participating in California Kids.
Because the family had recently enrolled in California Kids, Gabriel, a 27-year-old Anaheim man who asked that his last name not be used, was able to get treatment for his 6-year-old daughter, Gabriela, who had blood in her urine.
“Before this, we would have done nothing,” said the father, who makes $290 a week sewing vinyl pool covers. “When she had an earache last year, we didn’t see a doctor until she was screaming, ‘I can’t take it anymore.’”
The family avoids going to clinics, where a visit and a prescription could run $100, he said.
At Children’s Hospital of Orange County, Dr. Maria Tupas checked Gabriela’s urine, and offered a coloring book along with some good news: The girl had no serious problem, maybe just an infection. The doctor gave the family tips about sunscreen and dental care, and suggested Gabriela return in a year for a physical.
Health experts say that although there are holes in the patchwork of services for low-income families, California Kids plays an important role in reducing a community’s health costs by not only helping children get help for immediate problems, but also by ensuring they get care that may prevent serious adult illnesses.
Michael Koch, executive director of the 10-year-old foundation that serves about 19,000 children in 33 California counties, said he hopes Orange County hospitals’ participation will encourage Los Angeles, San Diego and Sonoma counties to join.
“Orange County has become a model for what we can do in other counties,” he said.
Koch hopes that in a better budget year, the state may consider insuring the state’s undocumented children.
Health experts see his foundation as a solution to insuring low-income families in the meantime. “Given our fragmented system of getting benefits, this sort of arrangement is good,” said Steven Wallace, professor at UCLA’s School of Public Health.
In Orange County, $320,000 in tobacco-settlement funds plus donations from the hospitals have made it possible to enroll 5,000 undocumented children in California Kids this year.
Under the program, the medical insurance is provided by Blue Cross, dental insurance is offered by Delta Dental Care, and prescriptions by Wellpoint. California Kids pays the claims of the enrolled children, and in turn, the insurers waive certain fees.
“It makes a big difference in the kids’ lives, and the providers have an interest in making it happen to keep them out of emergency rooms,” said Lucien Wulsin Jr., director of Insure the Uninsured Project.