This week, we celebrate Cover the Uninsured Week with our colleagues at Covering Kids and Families – WI (CKF). With more than 525,000 Wisconsinites uninsured, including 65,000 children, we have more work to do in our state. Our strong BadgerCare program is a cost-effective and quality way to reach many uninsured residents, but it doesn’t cover everyone. Stay tuned to our “Is it Working for Kids?” series next week, when we’ll examine how health reform can make further improvements to coverage in Wisconsin. For now, let’s talk about what we know is working – BadgerCare.You may have seen the Letter to the Editor I co-authored for Cover the Uninsured Week with Jennifer Winter, of Managed Health Services in West Allis (my co-chairwoman for the CKF Policy Committee) – it’s been published in newspapers across the state. We remind families with children to sign-up for BadgerCare coverage! Despite all the discussions of program changes and cuts, the coverage is still strong and available for children. Many times kids and families are eligible for BadgerCare but unenrolled. We want to change those numbers this week, and every week in Wisconsin. With one of the lower uninsured rates for children in the country, we’re on our way, but there’s still work to be done.
Some of the innovative work being done to raise awareness of and enrollment in BadgerCare coverage is being done by CKF in public schools. If you want to learn more about the school-based enrollment initiates supported by CKF, you can check out their site here. As part of this work, CKF surveyed parents of school aged children in two regions (southeast and northeast) of the state this fall. The parents and guardians were asked about their perceptions, knowledge, and participation in BadgerCare, particularly with regard to the current and appropriate role of schools in BadgerCare outreach. The full report, released this Cover the Uninsured Week, is a quick and visually appealing read (lots of graphs). You’ll see that over 70% families in the two regions said that they are “somewhat worried” or “extremely worried” about having health insurance. And that though 60% of respondents said that schools should have a role in letting families know about public health insurance options like BadgerCare, only 6% heard about BadgerCare through their child’s school.
Families in Wisconsin are getting insurance coverage in a variety of ways – but it’s been critical in the recent economic downturn that BadgerCare be strong and able to pick up residents losing their employer-sponsored insurance. Share the good news and raise awareness about this program during Cover the Uninsured Week. We all deserve quality, affordable health insurance coverage – and BadgerCare is helping us get there.
Sara Eskrich
