Last week, in a heartless act of fiscal folly, the California Budget Conference Committee voted to increase red tape for children with Medi-Cal coverage by requiring families to re-enroll in the program every six months. If enacted, this proposal will result in 250,000 children losing their coverage by 2011 on top of the almost 800,000 children in California that already are without health insurance.

It's time to take this fight to the top! Send a letter to the "Big 5" -- the Governor, Senate President, Assembly Speaker, Senate Republican Leader, and Assembly Republican Leader -- urging them to stop cutting eligible kids off healthcare coverage by increasing red tape. Now it's up to these leaders to reject this dangerous proposal.

Tell The Big Five

What's the harm in a little red tape? Ask Tamika Scott. When Texas was experimenting with similar reporting requirements, her son became a tragic victim of excessive bureaucracy.

Tamika's 10-year-old son was diagnosed with an advanced form of kidney cancer. Tamika, unable to work due to her own serious illness, was able to obtain chemotherapy treatments for her son through Medicaid coverage. Seeing her son go through chemotherapy was incredibly difficult, but then an even greater nightmare occurred. Two months before the Medicaid coverage was going to expire, Tamika submitted her application for renewal. Inexplicably, her application was lost in the system and was never processed. By the time that Tamika finally got the coverage reinstated through the intervention of a legislator, it was too late -- Tamika's son died tragically from complications from the cancer.

We must make sure that no mother or father experiences the heartbreak of a sick child barred from health coverage because of excessive red tape.

Contact your legislators today:

Tell The Big Five

THE LOW-DOWN - Under the proposed changes, children receiving Medi-Cal would be required to fill out paperwork to renew their healthcare coverage every six months rather than every year. Similar reporting requirements in Texas and Washington have had disastrous results -- large increases in administrative costs and many children dropped from coverage. Both states ended these dangerous experiments and returned to requiring annual reports, as California now does.[1]

Our state's most vulnerable children will be impacted the most by these requirements. Parents who have low reading levels or multiple jobs often do not have the time or skills to complete the paperwork even though their children are eligible. As a result, many children will lose their insurance, resulting in costly and dangerous gaps in coverage.

We understand that California is facing a large budget shortfall. However, cutting healthcare coverage for kids - by increasing red tape and administrative costs - is definitely not the answer!

After you send letters to the "Big 5," please forward this email to your friends and family. We need to generate as many letters as possible so our leaders know that California's families will not stand for such short-sighted and fiscally irresponsible policy.

Thanks for all your work on behalf of California's children!
Donna, Ashley, Kristin and the MomsRising.org Team

P.S. Support MomsRising.org's efforts to secure healthcare coverage for all kids in California. Your donation -- of any amount -- makes a difference. Click here to donate:

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/1768/t/9253/shop/custom.jsp?donate_...

[1] 100% Campaign Fact Sheet, http://www.100percentcampaign.org/resources/factsheets/fs-080715.htm