San Jose Mercury News President Urges Financial Support for Children’s Health Initiative
Joe Natoli, the president and publisher of the San Jose Mercury News, writes in an opinion piece for his paper that Santa Clara County's Children's Health Initiative "could be a potential model for all of America." The initiative is an effort designed to provide children with health insurance, but "more money is needed" for the initiative to reach its goal of enrolling 70,000 children in a health plan. Children who would benefit from such coverage include those whose parents are undocumented, earn too much money to quality for public coverage or who are "unaware" or "unwilling" to enroll in programs such as Healthy Families. Noting that a "grass-roots" program at Sun Microsystems raised $3,000 in its first week for the initiative, Natoli said such an investment is "one of the wisest ... our community ... could make" (Natoli, San Jose Mercury News, 1/13). Employees at Sun recently launched a monthlong e-mail campaign. In addition, the Sun Foundation, which matches employee contributions to charities, has agreed to match employee donations to the Children's Health Initiative (California Healthline, 1/3). Noting that it costs about $1,000 to sponsor a year of health coverage for a child, Natoli said he would join Sun Microsystems "in sponsoring a child." He concluded, "I hope you will consider doing the same" (Natoli, San Jose Mercury News, 1/13).
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