Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

For well over a year now, we have seen and assisted more and more hard working families who are struggling just to meet the basic needs for themselves and their children, including paying for food, housing, transportation and medical care.  

The growing need and the swelling numbers of individuals and families facing economic hardship are among the reasons we strongly support the State Children's Health Insurance Program. SCHIP helps working families who otherwise can't afford to insure their children, to provide the health benefits they need and deserve.

Congress and the president recently took a giant step toward covering more uninsured children by reauthorizing SCHIP. That's great news for Texas, which leads the nation with 1.5 million uninsured children, including about 200,000 in Dallas County.

A little-known fact is that almost 90 percent of these children have working parents. The average cost of employer-sponsored family health insurance in Texas is $1,000 per month – a sum clearly out of reach for a growing number of families. SCHIP provides a viable alternative. Sadly, 750,000, or half, of Texas' uninsured children qualify for SCHIP but are not enrolled.

It is now time for Texas to act – and to act boldly. First, we must streamline the application process for SCHIP, providing the necessary support staff and IT tools to get the job done quickly. And we must spread the word about the SCHIP option for children across the state.

Second, the Texas Legislature should act swiftly to pass a bill to allow families earning $42,400 to $63,600 a year (between 200 and 300 percent of the federal poverty level) to purchase SCHIP for their children. The proposed sliding-scale fee structure would pay about half the cost of this much-needed, highly effective insurance. A minimal investment of just $20 per month per child could extend SCHIP coverage to tens of thousands of uninsured Texas children through the important "buy-in" program.

Supporting SCHIP makes sound business and economic sense. It brings our federal tax dollars home to Texas to provide affordable, comprehensive health care coverage for more of our children. In addition, investing now in improved health outcomes for our children contributes to their higher success rate at school, increased parent productivity at work and lower health care costs for us all. Furthermore, this creative insurance option will benefit Texas business owners by providing a low-cost health insurance option for hard-working, responsible employees.

Decisions made during the next few weeks will determine how many Texas children will be eligible to have doctor visits, dental and vision care, and prescriptions covered by SCHIP. Join me in urging your state legislators and Gov. Rick Perry to take the next steps on SCHIP for hundreds of thousands of our children.

We have a Texas-sized opportunity to get our children the health coverage they need – and to get Texas taxpayers a better deal than they're getting now, when uninsured children are forced to select a much costlier health care option in emergency rooms.

More information is available through The Texas Finish Line Campaign, a statewide collaboration that works to ensure that every Texas child has access to comprehensive and affordable health insurance (www.txfinishline.org).

Larry James is president and CEO of Central Dallas Ministries. His e-mail address is ljames@CentralDallasMinistries.org, and he blogs at larryjamesurbandaily.blogspot.com.