Frank Pallone: “I really believe that we are starting to be heard. We know that, for example, on the Senate side there is a movement on…”

“I really believe that we are starting to be heard. We know that, for example, on the Senate side there is a movement on a bipartisan basis to try to address this issue... According to the General Accounting Office, an estimated 3 million uninsured children are eligible but not enrolled in Medicaid. So that is the first category. We might say, why is that the case? There are a lot of socioeconomic reasons. As we mentioned before, most of these kids have parents who work, sometimes two or three jobs. It is very difficult a lot of times for them to even get involved with the bureaucracy where they would go to Medicaid and sign up and fill out a lot of papers in order to enroll their children. There is also a sense of pride, that Medicaid, probably wrongly, is in many cases now associated with welfare.”