RELEASE: August 23, 2000

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It's back to school time -- time for parents to help ready their children for the new school year. Most parents will do this by making sure their children have new school supplies, clothing and a hair cut. But there is something important that some parents will overlook and many children will be without as they begin the school year. It's health insurance.

Many working families in New Jersey have no health insurance. Without insurance, their children are at greater risk of missing school due to illness. Most of these families could avoid this risk because they may be eligible for free or low-cost health coverage for their children and themselves through the NJ FamilyCare program, formerly known as NJ KidCare.

Since 1998, NJ KidCare has made affordable health insurance -- including comprehensive health, dental and vision coverage -- available to some 70,000 uninsured children in New Jersey. The recent expansion of the program, signed into law by Governor Christie Whitman this summer, now offers similar coverage for parents

(though eligibility requirements differ for adults).

New Jersey, in fact, has the most generous program in the country, and is especially generous to children, offering benefits to children in uninsured families with incomes up to 350 percent of the national poverty level. This means that children in a family of four earning nearly $60,000, for example, can qualify for coverage.

And now New Jersey is one of the first states in the nation to expand its program to include adults. Parents of children in the NJ KidCare program who earn up to 200 percent of the federal poverty level -- more than $34,000 for a family of four -- are now eligible for FamilyCare coverage. Single adults with incomes up to $8,350 and childless couples with incomes up to $11,256 are also eligible.

Some eligible families may hesitate enrolling in the program because they believe the process is too complicated. But new, simplified enrollment forms are now making it easy to apply for NJ FamilyCare coverage. The program also offers New Jersey residents free enrollment assistance.

So, if you are sending your child off to school this year with no health insurance, do some homework of your own. Pick up the phone and call NJ FamilyCare at 1-800-701-0710 or visit the NJ FamilyCare website at www.njfamilycare.org to learn if you are eligible.

Be sure you put a healthy school year -- as well as a backpack -- on your child's back-to-school list.

Michele K. Guhl

Commissioner

NJ Department of Human Services