A Reason to be Thankful

Ten-year-old Lisa has struggled mightily with asthma.  When she was younger, she had to be hospitalized several times a year. Her parents were worried sick about her and made sure she saw a specialist and obtained the right kinds of treatment and medicine. With the right treatment, Lisa’s life became normal. She was concerned about playing soccer, not about losing the ability to breathe. Then her dad lost his job and his health insurance. He now works two jobs to pay the bills, but there is no health insurance. The family could not maintain Lisa’s medicine all the time. She began to have asthma crises again. The family’s desperation ended a little over a year ago when the family found out about All Kids, the new Illinois program that offers health coverage to every child in the state. With sliding-scale premiums and copayments, the All Kids program allows Lisa’s parents to afford to have her covered with good insurance. She is well again and doing fine in school.

There are stories like Lisa's all over the state these days. If we look over the whole nation and examine the dreadful state of children’s health coverage, we realize how advantaged we are in Illinois. The state was the first to cover all children. Illinois is the envy of the nation, and the state’s leadership is having an impact. Other states are following along. Most recently, Wisconsin adopted coverage for all children.

Illinois’s leadership on covering children goes back at least ten years. There was a strong bipartisan implementation of KidCare, the Illinois version of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Gov. George Ryan led an intense KidCare enrollment drive to make sure kids accessed the coverage. Another bipartisan effort led to the creation of FamilyCare, covering the parents of eligible children. Everyone understood that covering parents meant greater enrollment of children and increased preventive care for children. There has always been solid public support. In Illinois, covering children is the right thing to do. Gov. Rod Blagojevich rode this tide when he announced All Kids, and the General Assembly immediately embraced it. Everyone owns a piece of this success story.

The haze and the noise of the current Springfield battles should not obscure the history of cooperation and leadership that produced and maintains the All Kids program. We all need to remember that our state is capable of an All Kids success story, capable of leading the whole country. Lisa and all the Illinois kids like her know that this is a very big thing to be thankful for this year.