Our Opinion: Caring for 'our future'

Despite countless effort and many champions for children throughout our state; despite political rhetoric that nothing is more important than our children — "our future," they are called with warmth and hope — Florida is guilty of child neglect.

The emotion doesn't translate. The well-meaning programs don't suffice. Healthy Start, Health Kids, Healthy Families, Florida KidCare insurance — all the programs that aim high but are constantly struggling for support — are not getting the job done.

Thursday's report on children's health care from the Commonwealth Fund, which is a nonprofit that advocates for health issues, ranked Florida 47th among the states and the District of Columbia in the access of our children to affordable and preventative health care.

Ranked on 20 health-care-related criteria, Florida came in the bottom quarter of the states in nearly every measure, from affordability and treatment to the potential to lead healthy lives, in large part because so many children are uninsured.

From infancy to age 18, some 18 percent are uninsured for medical care, and no state ranks lower in terms of children getting access to dental care. In recent years, most estimates put that at between 600,000 and 700,000 children without health insurance.

During the economic downturn, even some children who had been covered by family insurance lost it when parents lost their jobs and health coverage along with it.

KidCare, Florida's low-cost insurance program for very low-income parents, has never been the success story it should have been, with complex application processes and low public awareness that it even exists.

And last month, Florida got no portion of $206 million in federal bonus money for states that have adopted smart KidCare-style enrollment and retention policies, because Florida met only five of eight benchmarks to earn the grants. One easy fix, which lawmakers have so far declined to try, would have set up express-lane eligibility for enrollment by using the Free and Reduced Lunch Program in the public schools as evidence of eligibility. We also make parents renew their KidCare policy every six months, for no apparent reason whatsoever.

Finally, this week, Insurance Commissioner Kevin McCarty gave back $1 million in federal grants awarded to states to help with health reforms — an act of refusal linked to our state's official and hotly political dislike of federal involvement in state matters.

Our priorities are skewed in Florida, where we have created a Children's Cabinet in Florida, an organization created to share information with other agencies about child welfare.

Here in Leon County, we are fortunate to have Whole Child Leon, a wonderful program to connect parents with information and services for children, but it's local in scope.

Last year, the Children's Movement of Florida (www. childrensmovementflorida.org), which calls itself the Milk Party, was launched to make more visible all efforts to raise, not taxes, but healthy children. The Children's Campaign (www.iamforkids.org) has had a similar goal since 2002.

We need such advocates seeking health insurance for all children, screening and treating for children with special needs and more best-practices efforts aimed at early-childhood education and parenting. It's a big mission to educate political, business and civic leaders — and all parents — about the urgent need to make the well-being and education of infants, toddlers and all other children Florida's highest priority.

If this latest report is even remotely on target, these efforts and others like them have never been more urgent.

Meanwhile, Florida is busily fighting other battles, such as repealing the Affordable Care Act, which among other things prevents denial of insurance for children with pre-existing conditions and allows young adults to say on their parents insurance plan until age 26.

The children in our state deserve to know how we can work at such cross purposes, so at odds with all well-meaning rhetoric and with such devastating consequences.

Read the full article here.