DENVER.... Colorado community leaders called on the state's congressional delegation to expand access to public health care for thousands of uninsured children in Colorado and across the country. The group urged Congress to remove barriers to Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) for lawful permanent resident immigrant children and pregnant women.
”The current policy hurts Colorado children and families and it is unfair and unjust that federal regulations deny basic health care to low-income children at the time they need it most, during childhood," said Francoise Mbabazi, Health Justice Program Director for the Colorado Progressive Coalition. “Denying children health care closes doors to opportunity, and can leave a life long legacy of health problems.”
According to a new report released today, Bar to a Healthy Future: Stories of the Immigrant Children Left Behind, current federal regulations bar states from enrolling recently admitted immigrants in Medicaid or SCHIP during their first five years with lawful permanent resident status.
The effects of the current five year bar have been extremely damaging to immigrant children and their families, who already suffer greatly from disparities in access to quality health care," said Emily Parkey, Lead Organizer for Rights for All People, a Denver-based immigrant organization. We cannot afford to deny preventive care to our children, who deserve the right to a healthy future and a chance to achieve the American Dream.
The leaders called on Congress to include language to remove this five-year bar in the overall reauthorization bill for SCHIP currently under debate in the U.S. Senate.
”It’s time that we Coloradoans do the right thing”, said Steve Bieringer, Chair of the Colorado Consumer Health Initiative (CCHI) Board of Directors, “and pressure our Senators and Representatives to remove the five-year bar at the federal level, so that our state SCHIP program has the funding it needs to reach out to the Coloradoans left behind by this bar.”
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