For Senator Andy Kim, children’s healthcare coverage is personal. Inspired by his own children, one of whom needed significant medical care upon birth, Senator Kim has spent years developing a plan to provide every child in the United States with free healthcare coverage.
“Nothing is more worrisome for me or for any parent than the health of our children,” Kim says. With approximately 4.7 million children uninsured and 23 million underinsured, Kim sees the challenge of ensuring quality health coverage for kids as the moral duty of our time.
Enter MediKids.
The MediKids Act (S5037), introduced July 21 and co-sponsored by Cory Booker, Tammy Duckworth and Alex Padilla, would provide comprehensive healthcare for every child in the country, including mental health, vision, dental and hearing coverage.
MediKids is a plan for a federal children’s healthcare program for every child from birth to age 26. Children would be automatically enrolled (parents can opt out if they choose) and there are no income thresholds. Notably, MediKids plans to cover all children, regardless of documentation status. Kim sees the program as “an important bookend to Medicare,” the federal program that provides healthcare coverage for seniors aged 65 and up.
How will MediKids improve educational outcomes for New Jersey students?
Educators are often confronted with the ripple effects of lack of health insurance in their classrooms. Whether it be a child who needs glasses or one who needs family counseling, or a student who is missing vaccines and must therefore be temporarily unenrolled, teachers and ESPs are all too familiar with the link between lack of healthcare and lagging student performance.
“It’s so admirable,” Kim says about educators who care deeply about their students’ health and well-being, “but it’s not their job.”
Kim argues that universal healthcare for children would allow for easier access to preventative care and would reduce absenteeism. Reducing student absence rates has been a major post-pandemic priority for the New Jersey Department of Education.
Of course, healthier students means healthier teachers and school staff and the upfront investment in children’s health would result in lower overall healthcare costs for everyone.
Made just for kids
MediKids is also unique by virtue of its child-focused design. Kim explained that in speaking to doctors and healthcare professionals, he learned that kids cannot be looked at as mini adult patients, as their needs are quite different from those of an adult. Children need regular screenings, diagnostics, vaccines and preventative care while they are growing that adults don’t need to access in the same ways or with the same frequency.
Kim states that MediKids hopes to raise the bar for the standard of care for children in the United States.
What about the cost?
The MediKids Act proposes covering 100% of the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage (FMAP), thereby taking the burden of financing the program off of state budgets. While Kim acknowledges that the initial investment would be significant, he sees MediKids as part of a larger, long-term vision for the United States. “We also have to have an affirmative, positive vision of what kind of future we stand for,” Kim says.
Additionally, if enacted, the act would reduce healthcare expenditures nationwide. Healthier kids, parents and school staff means less frequent emergency room visits and earlier disease detection and treatment.
While the specifics of the program budget and funding sources are still being studied, Kim states that there are cost-saving byproducts of MediKids, such as increased economic productivity and workplace efficiency due to healthier employees and less work absences.
If we are to learn anything from the Covid-19 pandemic, it should be that individual health is inextricably linked to the health of a given community.
Doing everything possible
Healthcare coverage and funding have been fraught with controversy for decades. However, Kim believes that if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that we need to do right by children. All children.
“How are we not doing everything humanly possible?” he asks.
Kim’s MediKids plan is a straightforward, simple proposal, albeit a politically challenging one to accomplish. In a way, the simplicity of the act brings into sharp clarity one of the most pressing moral questions to which we must respond: “How are the children?”