Down payment on children's health

Gov. Christine Gregoire showed the right priorities in launching her term with a reversal of the rules that could've cost 19,000 children their state-sponsored health-care coverage.

The action is a down-payment on Gregoire's campaign promise to provide health-care insurance by 2010 for children whose families cannot afford it. The priority of children's health-care coverage is not a change in policy but a continuation of the priorities this state once had.

In 1994, the Legislature expanded health-care coverage to Medicaid families earning up to 200 and 250 percent of the federal poverty level. Washington state was ahead of the federal government, which didn't expand coverage until 1997, and ahead of nearly every state in the Union. The rationale? No child should be without health care.

This principle was eroded in recent budget cycles, with the final straw being changes to Medicaid eligibility.

Gregoire's executive order takes effect immediately, but it is a reprieve, not a solution. To sustain this state's health-care priorities, a way must be found to contain costs and spread more equitably the burden of paying for health insurance.

One tool would be prescription-drug-buying consortiums.

Washington Citizen Action, an advocacy organization, estimates state agencies could save $65 million a year by using their combined leverage to negotiate lower drug prices. The pharmaceutical industry won't like this. It ought to happen anyway. Especially because Washington is unlikely to get another needed tool: federal permission to license Canadian prescription drug wholesalers and import that country's cheaper drugs.

Gregoire's five-point health plan is just the start. It needs a rigorous workout in the Legislature to test its efficacy and affordability.

Moreover, lawmakers heading health-care committees in both houses of the Legislature have dozens of cost-saving proposals, running the gamut from improved technology to ferreting out wasteful inefficiencies.

But Gregoire launched the conversation with creative thinking. She also did the right thing by removing this state's children from the line of fire.

We're a leader in providing health coverage for children and ought to build on this model.