New report on uninsured children confirms Healthwave enrollment failures

Kansas Action for Children released a new report yesterday that claims Kansas is continuing to fail its children when it comes to health insurance. This is a hard fact to face in light of a long time state program called Kansas Healthwave that is supposed to provide low and no income families with health insurance for their children.

In fact, the press release by KAC ignores the failure of Kansas Healthwave to enroll children, which is clearly stated in the their report, as seen in the quote above.

In fact, the report highlights the need to increase enrollment and retain children already in the program to decrease those without insurance. These actions both involve minimal effort by the state and certainly do not call for another government program. Further, the KAC report notes what was already known, that Kansas Healthwave has been a failure of a program and one government failure doesn’t justify the need for a new one, as many on the left currently advocate.

From the report:

The best approach to addressing the state’s increased rate of uninsured children is two-fold. We need to focus on outreach efforts to ensure that more Kansas families enroll their children in HealthWave. But, we also need to place an emphasis on retaining eligible children who are already enrolled in HealthWave. Similar to other states, Kansas struggles to retain eligible children in the program, which results in children “churning” in and out of HealthWave.

Any attempt by the left to use this report as a reason for more government action is asinine in light of the current failure of government to get the job done, as highlighted by the report itself. But more importantly, such action would be dishonest and deceitful, in full contradiction of the facts, and clearly only done to advance a narrow, partisan political agenda.