L.A. Care Health Plan will contribute $40.5 million to the Children's Health Initiative of Greater Los Angeles, the coalition responsible for raising money to support Healthy Kids. Healthy Kids is a free and low-cost health insurance program for children from low-income families in LA County. The announcement was made in May at a press conference at the First 5 Early Learning Center in Los Angeles. Howard Kahn, CEO of L.A. Care Health Plan, Supervisor Don Knabe and other community leaders attended the event.

"As a founder of the Children's Health Initiative, we wanted to lead by example in donating a multimillion-dollar grant to help as many children enroll in Healthy Kids as possible," Kahn says. "Our greater goal was to raise the public consciousness about uninsured children and encourage policy efforts to resolve the problem permanently." Along with L.A. Care Health Plan, The California Endowment and the Los Angeles County Department of Health Services are also founders of the Children's Health Initiative.

The $40.5 million grant will fund health insurance through March 2007 for the nearly 35,000 children now enrolled in Healthy Kids. The grant is intended as a challenge to LA County stakeholders to work together to provide every child in the county with comprehensive health insurance. More than 200,000 children are currently uninsured.

During the press conference, the Aguirres, an El Salvadoran family that immigrated to America four years ago, revealed how Healthy Kids helped their family. The Aguirres have two children, Carla, who participates in the Healthy Kids program, and Renato, a former beneficiary of the program.

The grant comes on the heels of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's May budget revision, which allocates $23 million toward health insurance for 22,000 children on waiting lists for county-based children's healthcare initiatives. Such initiatives serve uninsured children whose low-income families earn too much to qualify for federal or state programs.

"The governor's proposal, along with the 100% Campaign, adopted by many counties throughout the state, will bring light to this issue and help insure more of California's children," Kahn adds. An Oakland-based collaborative effort of Children Now, Children's Defense Fund and The Children's Partnership, the 100% Campaign works toward providing affordable insurance to all California children.