Candidate for Iowa governor unveils health insurance plan

DES MOINES — Democratic gubernatorial candidate Mike Blouin unveiled a plan Tuesday to extend health-care insurance to more Iowa children, saying every child should have access to coverage.

Each year, up to 90,000 Iowa children, or 12 percent, go without health-care coverage for part of the year, Blouin said. Despite efforts in recent years to enroll more children in health-care programs such as Medicaid and Hawk-I, up to 6 percent of children who are eligible still have not joined.


“Children who are not covered still get sick, they still seek treatment. And the cost is dramatically higher if we ignore the problem,” Blouin said.

Medicaid is a state health-care program for the poor and disabled. The Hawk-I program insures children from low-income families who are not poor enough to qualify for Medicaid.

Blouin wants to change the income eligibility guidelines so more children can enroll in Hawk-I.

Blouin, one of several Democrats seeking his party’s nomination for governor, said he’ll spend the month of January talking about health-care issues.

“I believe this is an area where we can be bold, work collectively and make a dramatic difference in the quality of life of all Iowans,” Blouin said.

Blouin also wants the state to mandate that every school district provide access to a school nurse. Close to 90 districts have no school nurse, and Blouin said the state should pick up the costs of employing one.

“We need to have a plan that makes this universally available to all of our school kids, and cost should not be the reason that it’s not done,” he said.

He said ignoring the health-care needs of Iowans ends up costing the state three times what it would cost preventing the problem. Blouin said he did not know how much his plan might cost.

“I’m not worried too much about the price tag for doing it, as I am about the price tag for not doing it,” he said.

Other parts of the plan include:

n Enhancing screening for newborns to identify health threats at an early age.

n Studying health insurance options for Iowa college students and recent graduates who are preparing to start their careers. Blouin said the plan would encourage college graduates to stay in Iowa and seek employment here.

Iowa House Speaker Christopher Rants, R-Sioux City, said GOP lawmakers will focus this year on creating “purchasing pools” that would bring down the cost for small businesses to provide insurance to their workers.

He fears plans like the one Blouin is proposing would cost too much money.

“Either he’s being irresponsible by not having a price tag, or it’s just so cotton-picking high he’s afraid to tell people what that price tag’s going to be right now,” Rants said.