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• Young Americans and the Digital Future Campaign
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• Ms. Lazarus featured on The Road to Health
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Tavis: We continue our "Road to Health" series with a look at the crisis of kids and health care. Wendy Lazarus is the co-founder and co-director of the Children's Partnership. Her organization is part of the 100% campaign, a collection of 3 leading children's advocacy groups. She previously served as the first director of the children's defense fund. Wendy Lazarus, you like kids, don't you?

Wendy Lazarus: It's in my blood. I care a lot about kids, yep.

Tavis: These numbers--I'm glad you love kids because apparently--I don't want to put it that way. That might sound a little harsh. I'm glad you care about kids. I was about to say, which I'm not--I was about to say apparently we don't love kids as a country as much as we say we do because these numbers are absolutely staggering of the uninsured.

Lazarus: Well, I think we're just not paying attention. I think what we've seen from our decades of work is, actually, the American public wants to do right by kids, and when given the opportunity and given a set of ideas, they'll get behind it, but in terms of health care, we do have our work cut out for us. Nationally, we've got about 8 million kids who have no health insurance at all. You know, theirs are the parents who are losing sleep at night when their kids have the ear infection or the sore throat, and there's nothing they can do in the worst case but go to the emergency room, and it's a horrible feeling. I think parents--millions of parents across the country--know what it's like to have a sick child. In California, we've got one out of every 10 of those 8 million uninsured kids, and we believe, actually, there's an opportunity now to solve this problem and get coverage for all of those children in the state of California.

Tavis: Before I talk to you about the good news, and why you feel, at least at this point, you can get some traction on doing something proactive and progressive about the plight of America's kids, let me go back to something you said a moment ago when you said to me that you think we have this problem, or this problem exists in part because we're not paying attention. I respect that answer, but I want to challenge it because I'm just not convinced, and there are others who are not convinced that it's not just that our politicians are not paying attention. Might it very well be that because kids can't vote that their issues are ignored, so it's not just this amorphous, you know, "We're not paying attention"?

Lazarus: No question. More and more, we're seeing that the issues that get attended to in this country at the federal and the state and the local level are the ones that have political clout behind them, and those of us who work on behalf of kids, you know, are trying to get smarter about building broader constituencies so that we can compete with the issues that have more clout, but that's our challenge, and we can do that.

Tavis: OK, tell me--I love hope. I love being hopeful. Tell me why you're hopeful that we can, at this particular juncture, do something about it and why you feel that now is that propitious time.

Lazarus: Yeah. No, it's a good question 'cause it's counterintuitive to think in this climate we could do that. Health is on the minds of everybody these days, you know? The rising costs of health care, the growing numbers of uninsured. Doing something about the health crisis is a bit daunting, but taking off the piece that is the children's piece is a much more manageable piece. Now, this comes as a surprise to a lot of people, but in California, where we're trying to model what could be done in every state in the country, we're 90% of the way there. 90% of California's kids have health insurance, so the remaining 800,000 kids becomes a more manageable job for us to take on. The reason we are optimistic bordering on confident is that the public is behind this. There was a public opinion poll done in the last about 6 weeks that shows in California 90% of voters think that children not having health insurance is a serious problem, and 80% of them support a plan to cover kids, and they think it's realistic and doable. That's partly, too, because the costs of insuring kids and paying for health care for kids are relatively modest.

Tavis: I've said many times, Wendy, when speaking of California politics that what happens in California can either cast a long shadow or a long sunbeam across the country because so many people pay attention to what happens vis-à-vis public policy in this state, and if it's good then they will emulate it around the country. If it's not so good, then it doesn't get emulated, but we're like an incubator in a lot of ways here. Tell me, to your point of California's kids, 90% of them at least being covered with regard to insurance, how that is the case here, what it is that we've done right to get those 90% covered that other states can learn from while we work on getting that last 10% covered?

Lazarus: Well, we've done the common-sense thing. We've actually built on what's out there to provide health insurance to kids, and that is the employer base. Still more than half the kids in California are covered through their parents' employers, but we've also done a very good job in the last few years of using the public health insurance programs that are supported by federal and state dollars--that's Medicaid and the S-chip program--to bring more and more kids into coverage, and so interestingly, while the adult problem has gotten worse in terms of uninsurance, kids are doing better because we do have this safety net of the public health insurance programs.

Tavis: But haven't I been reading, though, that President Bush is considering cutting Medicaid?

Lazarus: It's a threat to children across the country. It is the foundation on which low-income kids get health care coverage, and it's the fight that everybody's got to stand behind if they care about kids is to protect the Medicaid and the chip funding because that's what our innovative proposal in California to go the rest of the way is gonna use as its foundation.

Tavis: California is such a multi-cultural, multi-racial, multi-ethnic state. We are, as you well know, a microcosm of the world. Tell me how disproportionately kids of color are affected by the lack of insurance coverage.

Lazarus: Nationally and in California, the majority of uninsured children are children of color, but what comes as a surprise to a lot of people, 3/4 of them have parents who work. So these are children of working parents. They're increasingly children who we think of as in middle-class families who can't get covered through their employers because their employers are really watching their bottom line so closely, and they can't afford to pay for it out of pocket. Nationally, about 20% of uninsured kids are African-American. In California, the highest proportions are Latino.

Tavis: You mentioned a moment ago that 90% of California's kids are covered. Does that number include the kids of undocumented workers?

Lazarus: That's 90% of all kids in the state.

Tavis: Including those?

Lazarus: Yes. And our effort is to cover all kids. You know, interestingly, there's a lot of leadership at the county level in California. L.A., for example, has a children's health initiative to cover kids. 26 other counties either have one or have one on the drawing boards. And they're covering all kids because they understand that for a parent, what's gonna get you to believe this program's for you, and to get your child covered is the message "Everybody is eligible to get affordable coverage." and so that's what our push is, is a simple message that you will help pay the cost of care based on your ability to pay, but you can get care through this program that we're calling "California Healthy Kids."

Tavis: Tell me how this issue of uninsured kids specifically impacts the conversation that we have in this country from time to time about the need or the call, certainly, for a universal health care coverage. How does this conversation about kids impact that political debate about universal health care and vice versa? How does that debate impact this issue?

Lazarus: Well, there are many groups who are pushing to cover all Americans. It's the right thing to do to offer affordable coverage to all Americans. I think the way this connects, though, is for people who feel that we might have to get there step by step. Children are a very logical building block and a place to begin. And I think that's why we've been able in California to get the support of California Small Business Association, the Los Angeles Chamber, the California teachers. Faith organizations all over the state. I think it's viewed as the common ground we can agree is the right first step, that we can agree is affordable, and is something, even in these tough times, that we can do. We've done our homework, too. You know, we've done the polling; we've looked at the financing. Price Waterhouse Coopers has actually costed out what it would require, and bottom line is that the majority of the money to pay for the rest of these uninsured kids is already available and basically sitting out there to be tapped either through federal matching dollars or through parents paying their fair share. And if we filled the gap of what still needs to be found, it amounts to about $6.00 per year for every Californian, and we could solve this problem.

Tavis: So, nationally, is it finally unrealistic to think that we can in fact cover every kid in America with insurance?

Lazarus: It's the most realistic, ambitious goal we could possibly rally around. The numbers are manageable. We think, in California, and I think this should be the case nationally; it should be a shared solution. It should be a combination of parents paying what they can, of employers voluntarily participating in this, and of public responsibility.

Tavis: She's Wendy Lazarus of the Children's Partnership based here in L.A. Wendy, nice to have you on the program.

Lazarus: Pleasure to be here. Thank you.

Tavis: Up next on this program, author Quang Pham, and a look back at the end of the Vietnam War 30 years ago. He's written a fascinating book that really does speak to the American dream as we know it. We'll talk to former marine Quang X. Pham in just a moment. Stay with us.