What about coverage for kids?

Re “Some steps, no leaps on healthcare,” Sept. 4

By what conceivable editorial policy does your newspaper decide to give front-page coverage to the “incremental tinkering with California’s healthcare system” while completely ignoring the fact that the Legislature has again, for the second time, passed a bill that would solve the problem once and for all, SB 840 -- which is now on the governor’s desk?

Jim Carlstedt

Santa Monica

Although the Legislature took a few modest steps this year to improve healthcare for California’s residents, these actions are a far cry from the commitments that many legislators and the governor made to healthcare reform, including providing health coverage for 763,000 children who remain uninsured in our state.

For several years now, our legislative leadership and the governor have promised to make covering all kids a priority. Los Angeles County, in addition to many other counties, has made heroic efforts to provide health coverage to all children. However, these efforts are not sustainable, and tens of thousands of children are set to lose their health insurance in the absence of a statewide solution to bring them coverage.

Adding insult to injury, the governor and Legislature propose to allow nearly 300,000 children to lose health coverage through this year’s budget actions.

Our legislators just passed a bill making sure they can get vision coverage after they leave office. It’s shameful that they aren’t doing more to ensure access to affordable health coverage for the uninsured children in our state today.

Wendy Lazarus

Santa Monica

The writer is founder and co-president of the Children’s Partnership.