Health Insurance Coverage for Kids and Families
Insurance coverage improves financial security, health status, mental health, and access to health care, while decreasing infant, child, and adult mortality rates. Kids with health insurance coverage are less likely to drop out of high school, more likely to graduate from college, and have higher incomes as adults. In order to allow children and families to thrive, health insurance coverage needs to not only be available, but affordable, continuous, equitable, and high quality. It must provide coverage for behavioral and oral health care in addition to physical care.
To improve child well-being through health insurance coverage, the Children’s Campaign partners with Covering Kids and Families and the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative to lead the All Kids Covered (AKC) Coalition. The Campaign also works with other partners and is focused on building advocacy partnerships with organizations who are led by and work with people of color who are directly impacted by the systemic inequities in health insurance coverage access.
All Kids Covered Coalition
The mission of the coalition is to improve the wellbeing of Colorado’s children through health care coverage, with the goal of ensuring that all Colorado children have access to coverage that is continuous, quality, affordable, and equitable.
Recent Policy Successes
HB22-1289 (Gonzales-Gutierrez & McCluskie/Moreno) Health Benefits For Colorado Children and Pregnant Persons (aka Cover all Coloradans) will provide comprehensive public health insurance coverage to children, pregnant and postpartum undocumented Coloradans and make other investments in perinatal care and services in Colorado. This includes investing in services that support the mental health and wellbeing of children and their caregivers.
SB22-147 (Kolker & Sonnenberg/Young & Pelton) Behavioral Health Care Services for Children provides funding for schools to increase the number of health professionals, allowing more schools and districts to provide behavioral health services for all students.
HB22-1329 (McCluskie/Hansen) Protecting Quality in Medicaid Perinatal Programs protects the quality prenatal and postpartum care in Colorado’s Medicaid program and provides funding for stakeholder engagement, including through the Maternity Advisory Council. In order to help drive Medicaid policy changes, this council is made up of individuals who have received perinatal services through Medicaid.
HB21-1232 (Roberts & Jodeh/Donovan) Colorado Option, establishes a standardized health plan in Colorado that must reduce health disparities and offer improved coverage of primary, behavioral, and perinatal health services. It requires the plan to reduce premiums and directs federal savings due to those reduced premiums into the Health Insurance Affordability Enterprise to allow additional coverage expansions for people left out of health reform.
SB20-215 (Moreno & Donovan/Kennedy & McCluskie) Health Insurance Affordability Enterprise, allows Colorado to pick up a federal fee on health insurance providers set to expire at the end of 2020 That will be used to reduce premiums, increase tax credits for insurance subsidies, and cover people left out of the system – including undocumented Coloradans. More than 50,000 Coloradans are expected to benefit from the additional cost-sharing assistance provided under this law and more than 10,000 Coloradans left out of health reform and without access to affordable quality health insurance are expected to gain coverage through this program each year.
HB19-1038 (Duran & Lontine/Ginal & Story) Dental Services for Pregnant Women on Child Health Plan Plus, provides dental insurance for the 900 pregnant Coloradans each year who use Colorado’s Child Health Plan Plus (CHP+) for their health insurance.
Expansion of Medicaid coverage for former foster youth
Federal reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program
