WASHINGTON – Voices for America’s Children, the nation’s largest network of multi-issue child advocacy organizations, celebrates National Children’s Dental Health Month with a call to action for improving pediatric dental benefits for the 16.5 million children going without dental care each year.

Beginning in 2014, typical health insurance plans must cover certain services and benefits to customers — a victory for children and families won through the Affordable Care Act, the federal health care reform legislation passed in 2010. These essential health benefits are now being decided, and how many services they cover could determine the standard of care American children receive.

“National Children’s Dental Health Month is particularly important this year as federal and state governments work to determine comprehensive the pediatric dental benefit within state essential health benefits packages,” said Bill Bentley, president and CEO of Voices for America’s Children. “Children have unique dental needs and these cannot go unaddressed during this critical time in our nation’s health care history.”

There are few examples of child-only coverage in today’s market, which adds to the unique challenge of defining the oral health component of the essential health benefits package. States have an opportunity to ensure that all children have access to quality oral health care by ensuring the affordability and comprehensiveness of pediatric dental benefits in their state’s essential health benefits.

“Great strides have been made for child health in the past two years, but much work remains,” said Bentley. “Federal authorities estimate that millions of children are eligible for health services like CHIP but not enrolled.

“Meeting this challenge will require more public education, but states also need to streamline their process for enrolling children,” Bentley added. “We can eliminate unnecessary red-tape in the application process, like mandatory interviews, in order to help children get vital care.”

In partnership with the Campaign for Dental Health, Voices for America’s Children hosts www.ILikeMyTeeth.org, a website that highlights the benefits of community water fluoridation as a proven prevention strategy to fight against childhood tooth decay. The Campaign for Dental Health works with local children’s and oral health advocates, health professionals and scientists to preserve our nation’s gains in oral health.

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As the nation’s largest network of multi-issue child advocacy organizations, Voices for America’s Children (Voices) has been on the forefront of every major child policy victory for the past quarter-century. With 60 members nationwide, Voices speaks up for kids, and mobilizes and advocates for public policies to improve the lives of all children, especially those most vulnerable, throughout the United States. Visit us at www.voices.org

.Voices is a founding member of the Children’s Leadership Council, a coalition of more than 50 leading national policy and advocacy organizations. www.childrensleadershipcouncil.com.

Read the rest at the Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children blog!

I had a wonderful opportunity, as a member of the Voices for America’s Children network, to meet with Vice President Biden and senior administration officials to discuss proposals outlined in last week’s State of the Union address and their place in the forthcoming federal budget.

Our task: to ask about health reform and the expansion of Medicaid, whether the administration planned to bolster juvenile justice and child welfare programs and whether children’s programs would be protected from budget cuts.

Read the rest at DC Action for Children’s blog!

Ensuring a robust and comprehensive Essential Health Benefits (EHB) package is critically important for children, especially those who are lower-income and/or have special health care needs.  HHS must aggressively define the EHB package for children and cannot rely on the sufficiency of the existing benchmark options outlined in the bulletin. This is especially relevant to the pediatric services outlined in the bulletin, such as oral and vision care.

Voices recommended the following regulatory approaches:

• HHS should take a prescriptive, rather than flexible, approach in setting the standard for children’s health care.
• Valuable state mandates securing access to critical services for children should be included in the EHB definition.
• Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services must clarify its regulations on the Children’s Health Insurance Program dental benefit as required by its renewal legislation in 2009.
• It is important to provide detailed regulatory guidance to states on the design of the pediatric dental benefit.
• Ensure that the Exchange regulations provide consumers equitable affordability of oral health benefits, regardless of issuer.
• HHS should allow and encourage states to provide cost‐effective risk‐based pediatric dental benefits.
• Medicaid’s pediatric standard of coverage, EPSDT, should serve as the model for the scope and breadth of EHBs for children, including vision/oral care.  This includes EPSDT’s broader medical necessity definition, which is critical to ensuring healthy childhood development.
• The outlined approach regarding potential benchmarks for pediatric oral and vision care should be strengthened, so that states have the option of using the children’s Medicaid benefit as a benchmark.

We look forward to working with HHS to implement these recommendations, in order to ensure all children receive quality health care coverage and access as a result of the Affordable Care Act.

We wrote briefly on it last week, but you can get a more in-depth analysis in the latest issues of Speaking Out! Sign up here to get Speaking Out! delivered every Monday Congress is in session, letting you watch Washington from a child advocate’s perspective.

Obama officials outlined deductions and the preferential treatment of investment income as possible targets as they work to make the tax code more progressive. A senior Obama official said “it would be senseless’” not to extend long-term unemployment benefits that are due to expire next month. Vice President Joe Biden gave a speech reaffirming the administration’s commitment to addressing income equality, saying, “What is at stake is the middle class, and access to it.” We live-tweeted the event; follow us on Twitter to get updates, and check out all the photos we took on Facebook.

Rich Huddleston, executive director of Voices member Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, wanted the administration to explain, “Why wasn’t there greater mention of early childhood education and other issues related to young child development in the SOTU?” Early education programs are often ignored in this political climate of cuts, even though when the benefits are proven. Unfortunately, we didn’t get to press the administration on early education, but Obama officials stood by the president’s surprise proposal that students under 18 must remain in school — essentially making it so students can’t drop out in America.

That’s what we’ll find out today, as Voices meets with Vice President Biden and senior administration officials to discuss proposals outlined in last night’s State of the Union address and their place in the forthcoming budget. We plan to ask how the administration will proceed with the implementation of health reform and the expansion of Medicaid; whether the administration plans to bolster juvenile justice and child welfare programs; and whether kids’ programs will be protected from cuts. What would you like us to ask the Obama administration? Tell us on Facebook. And follow us on Twitter to get updates from the meeting.

The law in Illinois supplements the federal Earned-Income Tax Credit, a tax break for working families that in 2009 kept about 3 million children out of poverty.

Kelley Talbot, policy director at our member organization Voices for Illinois Children, is quoted saying, “It’s good news for working families. This is really a victory for parents. Parents will be able to stretch their income a little bit further.”

The strong correlation means that what state a child lives in could have a big impact on his or her life. The study provides a strong counterpoint to the conventional wisdom in Washington, D.C., now that the government must cut, cut, cut in order to ensure the future of the country. What do you think? Let us know on Facebook.

Much of the attention on the U.S. Supreme Court case regarding the Affordable Care Act (ACA) is focused on the individual mandate, the requirement for all Americans to carry health insurance.  But just as, and arguably even more important to children, the U.S. Supreme Court also will be deciding whether the law’s expansion of Medicaid eligibility is constitutional.

ACA expanded the eligibility of Medicaid for all legal residents to 133 percent of the federal poverty level.  The law covers approximately 16 million more Americans who might not otherwise have afforded the cost of health coverage.  Currently, more than 31 million children are enrolled in the Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Programs, which includes half of all low-income children.

As Politico’s J. Lester Feder penned in his article about the U.S. Supreme Court’s Medicaid expansion case, “Should the courts rule against the Obama administration and back the states’ contention that Medicaid expansion under the health reform law is unconstitutional, it would severely limit Washington’s ability to tell the states: If you want the federal Medicaid funds, you have to follow the federal Medicaid rules.”

In short, such a ruling would restrict federal law from binding state decisions on Medicaid, including who is eligible, what benefits are covered, and how much to pay providers.  Federal law covering this and other national programs works toward ensuring every state plays by the same rules.

Experts insist that a ruling against the Medicaid expansion would equate to a legal earthquake that could extend well beyond health care, upending the legal foundation of laws like the Clean Air Act and No Child Left Behind.  It also may impact programs such as Head Start, TANF, and the Child Care and Development Block Grant, which would potentially detriment tens of millions of children.