Stabenow, Levin Introduce Bill Expanding Children's Health Care

Press Release

U.S. Senators Debbie Stabenow (D-MI) and Carl Levin (D-MI) today announced the introduction of the "Healthy Schools Act of 2007." The bill seeks to expand low-income children's access to quality, affordable health care, by providing much needed resources to the nation's 1,700 school-based health centers (SBHCs) that bring high quality services directly into school buildings around the country.

"School-based health centers provide critical care to thousands of Michigan children each year," said Stabenow. "Properly funding and expanding these successful centers is an important step in providing the nearly 9 million uninsured children in this country access to quality, affordable health care."

"Every child in America must have access to high quality health care," said Levin. "Providing school-based health centers with much-needed resources would help ensure that children in Michigan and across the country can take advantage of a wide range of critical health services in an affordable way."

In Michigan, nearly 100,000 children are served each year through SBHCs located throughout the state. The proposed legislation would establish minimum criteria, for services offered by SBHCs, including comprehensive health and mental health assessments, intervention and treatment, as well as oral health, social, and health education services, as determined by states. Certified SBHCs would be provided a mechanism under which they would be eligible for Medicaid and SCHIP payment.

Currently, in a majority of states, SBHCs face a number of barriers that keep them from being reimbursed for treating children currently enrolled in the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and/or Medicaid. For example, every SBHC in the country provides care to SCHIP enrollees, but only one in four receive compensation from their state SCHIP program

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