Health insurance bill highlights children's agenda
Capitol Report for dailies for week of June 3, 2007
By Jim Campbell
OPA Capitol News Bureau
By comparison with past successes, it was a disappointing year for the kids' legislative agenda. But the executive director of the Oklahoma Institute for Child Advocacy said a bill offering health insurance for as many as 42,000 more children largely overshadowed the fewer victories.
Sen. Bill 424, the "All Kids Act" by Sen. Tom Adelson, D-Tulsa, and Rep. Doug Cox, R-Grove, passed the House near the end of the session and went to Gov. Brad Henry, who had included such a measure in his State of the State message.
"This was huge," said Ann Roberts, OICA executive director. "It almost made up for things we didn't get."
Cox, a physician, said it opens "access to health care for more hardworking families that struggle with the expense of health insurance premiums."
"This program is just one piece of a large puzzle to transform the health care system of our state and country," Cox said.
Said Henry, "For too many Oklahoma families the only recourse is to hope and pray their children don't get sick."
The act increases Medicaid eligibility for children from 185 percent of the federal poverty level to the maximum allowable 300 percent, covering children in families of four with an annual income of $38,200 to $62,000.
State subsidies providing matching funds for the purchase of health insurance would be weighted toward families with the lowest incomes.
After passing the Senate 41-7, the bill was believed to be stuck in the House as time dwindled. It cleared its final hurdle, 68-17, without support of the House leadership. Opponents also included the conservative Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs.
Up to $8 million would come from unused funds of the Oklahoma Employer, Employee Partnership for Insurance Coverage from tobacco taxes, or O-EPIC. The bill also directs the State Health Department to expand the Postponing Sexual Involvement program to areas with high birth rates by Jan. 1, 2011, also using O-EPIC funds of up to $500,000.  
Rep. Jeannie McDaniel, D-Tulsa, called it "the single greatest accomplishment of the 2007 Legislature."
Like goals of various agencies and interest groups, however, much of the children's agenda was dependent on new money, Roberts said, "and we got hardly any of it."
"I was very disturbed.  I don't know what happened," she said. "We made a big push. We brought in national speakers."
But finding significant achievement on children's behalf in measures not on the OICA agenda, Roberts concluded that the final outcome "was better than I thought."
These included measures promoting both fiscal and physical fitness in schools, use of court fees to pay for child abuse prevention programs, blocking registered sex offenders' access to MySpace and other popular Web sites, a crackdown on bogus alerts for missing children, an ATV helmet law, funding for Promise Scholarships and some improvement in the social host law. However, the addition of 3.2 percent beer to substances that could not be provided to minors was stripped from that bill in conference committee.
On the downside, these requested appropriations were not funded: expansion of child abuse/prevention programs and parent education services to more at-risk families; financial and educational incentives to increase workforce specializing in children's behavioral health; substance abuse treatment for children; increased provider reimbursement to enhance childcare quality; expanded Medicaid package to include partial hospitalization, intensive treatment and day treatment, and implementation of a coordinated school health model.
Measures to restrict youth access to alcohol by limiting placement and access in retail outlets and to provide Medicaid coverage for pregnant immigrant women were not heard.
In positive terms for OICA, the governor in February signed a bill supporting the Health Care Authority budget request for prenatal support systems.
Also, House Bill 1601 by Rep. Jeff Hickman, R-Dacoma, and Sen. Clark Jolley, R-Edmond, prevents schools from using recess to satisfy last year's anti-obesity requirement for an hour of physical education (PE) each week through the fifth grade and creates a task force to look at expansion of PE to higher grades.
"We really need to beef up PE," Roberts said.
Hickman said, "We need to make sure our students are at least getting a minimum of one hour of physical education each week."
Another Jolley bill, with Rep. Ann Coody, R-Lawton, known as the Passport to Financial Literacy, "is a really good one," she said.
It requires schools to teach about credit card debt, taxation, savings, investments, bankruptcy and insurance under guidance of the State Department of Education. It is effective in the 2008-2009 school year.
In signing HB 1476, Henry said, "Too many young people lack understanding of the simplest finances, and that void can have serious repercussions later on in life."
Henry said HB 1714 by Rep. Paul Wesselhoft, R-Moore, is "commonsense legislation that will protect children using the Internet, and it builds on the progress of Oklahoma's Safe Net initiative."  He said phony Amber Alerts targeted in SB 371 by Sen. Cliff Aldridge and Rep. Charlie Joyner, both Midwest City Republicans, "waste the resources of law enforcement and degrade the significance of legitimate alerts."
The OICA was established as a non-partisan, independent voice for Oklahoma children and youth.
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