ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, February 5, 1996 TAG: 9602050012
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
THE GENERAL Assembly's money committees this session must sort through nearly 2,000 spending requests filed by legislators totaling $5.2 billion - spending not included in Gov. George Allen's proposed $35 billion two-year budget. If many of these requests are rejected, Virginia will suffer no great loss.
This cannot be said, however, of bipartisan-sponsored budget amendments that would ensure the survival of the Comprehensive Health Investment Project of Virginia.
CHIP is the statewide outgrowth of the Roanoke area's nationally recognized CHIP (Child Health Investment Partnership). No other effort begun in Virginia has ever proved as effective in giving vulnerable children in low-income families, many of them ``working poor,'' a critically important healthy start in life.
The Roanoke-area initiative was launched in 1988 as a partnership involving the health department and private health care providers, human-service agencies and businesses. It was based on the premise that every child, from birth to age 6, should have a ``medical home'' - that is, be seen regularly by primary-care physicians, dentists and other health care providers.
As it was and is, many children never see a doctor for routine checkups and preventive care - because their families can't afford it, or lack health insurance, or may not qualify for Medicaid, or may not have their acts sufficiently together to get the kids to medical appointments.
Legislators unable to muster enthusiasm for helping impoverished kids should at least consider the fiscal implications: The sporadic and fragmented services that most poor children receive, often in clinics and emergency rooms, end up costing more than consistent, preventive care. Not only do investments in CHIP demonstrably reduce public health care costs. Indirectly, they also help cut welfare expenses and other long-term costs associated with children's unreadiness to learn in school or to develop into productive members of society.
And CHIP's case managers work not just with children but with their families, helping them become more self-supporting in the process. Last year, the percentage of CHIP mothers who are employed, for example, rose from 13 percent to 30 percent. Lawmakers ought to see the significance in such numbers.
With the help of public and private funds, including a grant from the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, 10 CHIP programs now serve 25 communities and more than 5,000 Virginia children and their families. But the Kellogg grant, and a sizable federal grant that facilitated CHIP's expansion, have been virtually used up and aren't likely to be renewed. And other possible sources of federal funds can't be counted on.
CHIP should be expanded statewide, even nationwide. In the meantime, though, simply to continue existing, it needs state funds it can leverage to attract other money.
The amount requested is ridiculously small - $4.4 million in the next two-year state budget - an appropriation that would be matched by local money, public and private, and multiplied by countless volunteers' contributions of time and services.
It is shameful that Allen excluded CHIP from his budget proposal. The assembly should correct his error and recognize the value of an amendment, among 2,000 submitted, that would help protect the health of Virginia's children and improve their prospects for a better life.
LENGTH: Medium: 65 lines KEYWORDS: GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1996by CNB