Price for kids' vaccines would go up

The nearly $1 billion in spending cuts in health care proposed by Gov. Christine Gregoire will pinch hundreds of thousands of Washington residents, from higher prices to vaccinate kids to the loss of steeply subsidized health insurance for the working poor.

The impact, however, could be even broader because the cuts are coming just as the economy is driving up the number of people seeking help.

For instance, the number of applications downloaded from the Internet for Basic Health Plan, the state insurance plan for lower-income workers, shot up by threefold to 27,000 between May and October.

Basic Health now covers 104,260 people, each of whom pay an average of $35.56 a month in premiums, with the state kicking in $200. State officials already were planning to pare back enrollment to 97,300 by the end of June. But Gregoire proposes to save $252 million in the 2009-11 state budget by cutting Basic Health's funding by 42 percent.

Gregoire also would suspend her goal of expanding health coverage to all children. An unknown number of families with incomes between 250 percent and 300 percent of the federal poverty level have applied for discounted children's coverage that was set to kick in Jan. 1. Families would pay just 20 percent of the premiums, with the state and federal governments paying the rest. But Gregoire's budget calls for dropping that subsidy.

The state also proposes to stop buying children's vaccines, which can cost $10 or more per dose. Doctors would have to purchase the vaccines on their own, passing the costs on to insurers or to parents.

Kyung Song: 206-464-2423 or ksong@seattletimes.com