The state’s relatively new children’s health insurance program is still trying to increase enrollment. Just over half of the state’s 45-thousand uninsured children eligible for CoverKids have signed up.
Started about a year-and-a-half ago, CoverKids offers free health insurance to children whose parents are above the poverty line, but still can’t afford to buy it.
The biggest push has been through-back-to-school mailers and with enrollment fairs like the one that happened yesterday at the Jefferson Street Missionary Baptist Church in Nashville. Michael Custer, a cook at a local restaurant, was there signing up his son.
“Most small businesses can’t afford to buy their employers health insurance and the ones that do attempt to end up having to charge their employees for the insurance which often times, like a restaurant the wages aren’t big enough for the people to be able to pay their rent and everything else and still buy insurance.”
Parents who make 250-percent of the Federal Poverty Level qualify for free —that’s about 53-thousand dollars annually for a family of four. Those who make more than that can buy in for about 225-dollars per month per child.
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