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Tuesday, May 27, 2008
Politics Kids’ Health Care Initiative to Turn in Signatures
Posted by on Tue, May 27 at 11:18 AM
The kids’ health care initiative I wrote about this week is moving a step closer to the ballot today—the campaign is dropping off signatures at city hall for verification. They’re more than a month away from the deadline, which seems to give them plenty of time to collect more signatures, if needed.
From the campaign:
The WhyNotPortland campaign is today submitting 30,520 signatures for its ballot initiative to provide health insurance for uninsured school children in Portland. The initiative will require 27,255 valid signatures from registered Portland voters to be certified for the November 2008 general election ballot in Portland. The WhyNotPortland campaign has gathered an additional 8,500 signatures, which it can submit if necessary to achieve the required number. Once certified, the initiative (PDX 14) will then go to the Portland City Council for review and possible ratification.
Comments
You're right, and that's partly by design. It makes the entire program affordable enough to make it feasible, and it also means the insurance is more of a stop-gap measure (so parents who already have better coverage for their kids through an employer, for example, won't jump ship and overtax this system).
No, it's not perfect, as chief petitioner Dr. Coodley is the first to say. But it's a strong start. And, he points out, $7500 might be a high deductible, but it's still a low enough number that should something terrible happen to a child, the family isn't financially ruined.
I don't mean to harp on this at all -- and you're right, it's better than having no insurance, if only because of the discount a patient is given for simply having insurance at all -- but having just gone through some healthcare woes with my kid, I'd bet that $7500/year per kid is enough to throw some folks into financial ruin, not to mention the potential coinsurance that is often a factor in many (most?) insurance plans above and beyond the deductible.
But like you said, it's a start..
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according to the Why Not Portland site, the health care that they want to put in place, while making office appts cheaper (presumably pre-deductible), will still come with a $7500 deductible for any actual health care -- most likely including routine vaccinations, not to mention regular-ole kid-style accidents. It's great that they wouldn't exclude kids with preexisting conditions, but that's still a pretty huge bite out of crime for a parent...
just another reason we need universal single-payer health care.