Santa Clara County Outreach Program Expanding Health Coverage to Children, Analysis Finds
Santa Clara County's Children's Health Initiative, an outreach program designed to increase enrollment in Medi-Cal, Healthy Families and other public health insurance programs, has expanded health insurance coverage to more than 29,000 children in its first two years, according to an analysis of the program released Monday, the San Jose Mercury News reports. Researchers from Mathematica Policy Research analyzed Medi-Cal and Healthy Families enrollment data for the county for 2001 and 2002 and found that 62,082 formerly uninsured children enrolled in the programs during those years. According to the analysis, about 13,500 of those children would not have enrolled without the outreach program. During the same two years, 15,638 children enrolled in the county-funded Healthy Kids program, which provides health insurance to children who are undocumented immigrants or whose annual family income exceeds 300% of the federal poverty level and are not eligible for coverage under Medi-Cal or Healthy Families.
The analysis was commissioned by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, which partially supports CHI. The program also receives funding from tobacco tax revenue, San Jose's share of the national tobacco settlement and other private-sector contributors. Santa Clara Family Health Plan, the county's Medi-Cal HMO, administers the program (Sweeney, San Jose Mercury News, 6/14).
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