Campaign Launches To Enroll Uninsured Children In State Health Care
DETROIT (WWJ) - Enroll Michigan is launching a campaign Tuesday to spread the word about the state of Michigan's free or low-cost health insurance programs.
David Seaman, Executive Vice President of the Michigan Health and Hospital Association, said about 65,000 uninsured children live in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb Counties.
"We have about 172,000 children within the state of Michigan who are currently uninsured," Seaman said. "And the estimate is that roughly 90 percent of them are eligible to participate in one of the state's two health insurance plans for kids."
The two health insurance plans provided by the state are MIChild and Healthy Kids. They are designed to provide children and teens with preventative health care measures such as regular checkups, dental screenings, prescription medications, immunizations and hospital care.
According to Seaman, these uninsured children are missing out on things that could seriously affect their health later in life.
"They don't have a primary care physician, they don't have access to a clinic, essentially ending up in the wrong place at the wrong time," Seaman said. "They end up in the hospital emergency room where the real miracles of American medicine, things like immunization and well baby care and the like, have passed them by."
Seaman explained that the objective of the campaign is to identify eligible children and get them enrolled in state health care.
"The program is being sponsored by a partnership of hospitals, schools, health centers, primary care physicians, all sort of intending to kind of connect the state's low-cost Medicaid health insurance plans to those in need," Seaman said.
To find out if your children are eligible and to enroll, just call 2-1-1 or visit the Michigan Primary Care Association website.
