THE ISSUE

Accessible health care is fundamental to a healthy society.  We must work to ensure that our health care system works for all Floridians, especially our children. 

The 1998 Florida Legislature created the Florida Kid Care program to make affordable health insurance available to low and moderate-income Florida children.  Florida Kid Care consists of several components:  Medicaid for children, the MediKids program, Healthy Kids, and the Children’s Medical Services (CMS) Network.  These programs aim to provide a seamless network ensuring coverage for all of the children whose families have incomes at or below 200% of the FPL or have special needs. 

FCC Position – Enroll All Eligible Kids in Florida KidCare Programs

To that end, we have a great interest in Florida Kid Care programs, and stand with many others seeking coverage for every eligible Florida child and teen under Florida KidCare.   

As the legislature considers new policies for the existing programs of the Florida Kid Care Program, we recommend the following steps: 

1. Sufficient funding to ensure that every eligible child who applies and is found eligible can participate in the program. 
2. Increase community coordination, retention efforts and outreach to ensure participation by eligible uninsured children.  Specific efforts should be undertaken for hard-to-reach populations.
3. Increase reimbursement levels for dental and physician services.
4. Utilize electronic data to verify applicant information to greatest possible extent.
5. Provide exceptions to prohibitions against subsidized Healthy Kids participation when employer-based coverage is lost, such as when coverage becomes disproportionately expensive.
6. Reduce mandatory “go bare” periods when voluntarily canceling employer-sponsored insurance and for failure to pay premiums in subsidized programs.
7. Allow payment of premiums in month due.

The State of Florida has made great strides in providing health care to Florida’s children through the Florida Kid Care Program.  However, hundreds of thousands of Florida’s children remain uninsured.  We must extend access to quality health care to all our children, and this will likely require even broader health care reforms. 

Contact: Michael Sheedy, Associate Dir. for Health, msheedy@flacathconf.org, 850-205-6824. 

Last updated: January 27, 2009