Boustany encourages LaCHIP enrollment

• By PATRICK COURREGES
• Advocate Acadiana bureau
• Published: Jun 17, 2008 - Page: 1BA - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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LAFAYETTE — U.S. Rep. Charles Boustany Jr. held a meeting for parents to push for enrollment of children in the state’s version of a federal program intended to provide health insurance for children of lower income families.

Boustany, R-Lafayette, state Department of Health and Hospitals Secretary Alan Levine, Lafayette City-Parish President Joey Durel and several council members were present at a noon gathering of parents at the Gethsemane Church’s La Petite Early Childhood Center in Lafayette.

The Lafayette congressman said he called for the gathering to help spread the word about the availability of the LaCHIP program — funded by a mix of federal and state money.

Boustany said he pushed last year for the continuance of the federal program and a $5 billion increase in federal funding for it, and he supported Levine’s call earlier this year to raise the maximum eligible income for families.

The old rules allowed families making up to twice the federal income standard for poverty to participate in the program, and the new rules allow for families with incomes of up to two and a half times the poverty rate to receive some level of benefit from LaCHIP.

According to DHH numbers, about 9,300 additional children in the state are from families that could now be included in the program with the increasing of maximum eligible income.

Boustany, a former surgeon, said the issue of health care, especially for children, is important to him.

He said that the federal, state and local levels of government must all work together to ensure as many children as possible have health insurance.

“If we’re going to make our community better, it’s got to be a partnership,” Boustany said.

Levine said that about 646,000 Louisiana children are covered by either Medicaid — the federal government’s insurance program for the poor — or LaCHIP.

He said that about 5.4 percent of Louisiana’s children eligible for the program — in the range of 60,000 to 65,000 — are still uninsured.

Levine said that his goal for the coming year is to enroll at least 28,000 more eligible children.

He said DHH had already made an enrollment push in north Louisiana earlier in the year and another is planned for the Lafayette area in August.