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It wasn’t the most exciting media event this newspaper has ever covered. Considering the importance of the topic — health insurance and other essential supports for our most vulnerable children in low income families — it seemed a missed opportunity when organizers didn’t get a child or two into the mix for a photo op Tuesday. But the that doesn’t diminish the value of their purpose.
“Our message is simple but critical,” United Way of Wyoming Valley’s Bill Jones said at the start of the media conference Tuesday afternoon, “Every child in our community should have health insurance coverage.”
Jones pointed out that, according to the Institute for Public Policy and Economic Development at Wilkes University, Luzerne County has an unsettling rate of uninsured children: 2.7%.
“That’s 1,800 children,” he said, “and 1,800 too many without insurance.”
An assessment as accurate as it is depressing.
In what still remains the world’s richest nation, having any child anywhere uninsured is an abomination. Adequate health care — including nutrition, dental vision and any other similar support — at the earliest ages can have a profound effect on a child’s development, which in turn impacts success (or lack of it) throughout life.
And as Jones and the local social service agency leaders who joined him Tuesday pointed out, this is often a case of parents or caregivers just not knowing what’s available. Programs exist to help at little or no cost: Medicaid insurance, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), the Women, Infant and Children nutrition program (WIC), and other opportunities can go unused not because there is no need, but because there is insufficient publicity to connect resources to people.
Which was a big part of Tuesday’s event. While each speaker gave a quick overview of what their agencies and programs do, they wove it all together by repeatedly pointing out how the 211 phone support system can play a central part.
The 211 system offers an easy-to-remember number to help people find the health and human services they need. Locally, it is the successor of Help Line, established in the wake of the 1972 Hurricane Agnes flood. Initially a resource of information for flood survivors, it evolved in 1975 to become a 24-hour crisis center linking callers with a growing list of area agencies. It moved under the Pa. 211 banner in 2011. (You can read about it, and get information you may need on other matters, at pa211ne.org.)
The idea of 211 is elegant and simple. It should serve as clearing house of opportunities, as the connecting link smoothly hitching people in need to people who can help.
But of course, it has no impact if the people in need don’t know 211 exists. Thus the reason for Tuesday’s event, a local effort at a national “Get Kids Covered” campaign to get the message out loud and clear:
Help is available to improve the lives of all children now and for years to come. It’s just 3 digits away.
— Times Leader