A $16.7 million reprieve funded by California's 50-cents-a-pack tax on cigarettes Wednesday allowed the state's Healthy Families insurance program for children to avert closing enrollment for the first time in its 10-year history.
The grant from First 5 California will allow Healthy Families – which provides medical, dental and vision care – to continue enrolling children through the end of June instead of capping enrollment beginning today, as state officials were planning.
Freezing enrollment would have left an estimated 162,000 children without medical coverage during the next six months.
"Just in time for the holidays we have been given an incredibly precious gift," Lesley Cummings, executive director of the Managed Risk Medical Insurance Board, which administers Healthy Families, told board members.
The federal government provides $2 for every $1 that California spends on Healthy Families, which covers more than 900,000 children in the state.
Because of a $17.2 million budget deficit, the board had been preparing to vote Wednesday to freeze enrollment in the program, which has enrolled an average of 27,000 children a month this year as unemployment has risen and families have lost job-based insurance.
But on Monday, the First 5 California board voted to cover what amounts to 96 percent of the Healthy Families deficit. Cummings said the money will give program officials time to cover the rest of the deficit.
Kris Perry, executive director of First 5 California, said the grant was consistent with her program's "commitment to protecting the most vulnerable children in California."
To qualify for Healthy Families, children must come from families that earn too much to qualify for Medi-Cal but not enough to buy insurance on their own.
First 5 is funded with proceeds from Proposition 10, approved by voters in 1998.
Call Aurelio Rojas, Bee Capitol Bureau, (916) 326-5545.
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