Anchorage Daily News

Two weeks before session's end, neither house of the Legislature has yet passed a bill to expand Alaska's children's health insurance for low and middle income families, even though Alaska's coverage is below that offered by 45 other states. A vote could happen today in the Senate -- and it should.

Sen. Bettye Davis of Anchorage says her Denali KidCare bill is scheduled for a vote. It would offer government-funded health insurance to children in families that earn up to double the federal poverty rate. Right now, state health insurance covers pregnant women and children in families earning up to 175 percent of the federal poverty rate, or $40,057 for a family of three. Davis' bill would raise that to $45,780. Last year, a bill like Davis', calling for a modest raise in benefits, got through the Senate in the last days of the session and couldn't make it through the House in time. This is astonishing when you consider that we are one of the wealthiest states, yet our state has one of the stingiest plans for children's health insurance. Forty-five states including the District of Columbia cover children in families earning two times the federal poverty level or more. Nineteen states cover families at 212 times the poverty level, Davis' office says.

Alaska's reluctance to expand this program is also hard to understand when you consider that the federal government picks up at least two-thirds of the cost.

The issue is a humanitarian one: Children whose parents can't afford private insurance should not have to suffer for it.

Gov. Sarah Palin agrees and has said she supports raising the coverage limit to double the poverty level. Last year she didn't speak out on the issue, but this year, she's come out in favor. Davis says her bill would extend coverage to nearly 1,300 more uninsured children and 225 pregnant women. It has been sitting in limbo since the first half of March.

Other legislators propose even bigger expansions of subsidized health care for children. Rep. Mike Hawker's bill would allow families earning up to 250 percent of the poverty level to qualify, with those earning 175 percent or more paying part of the premiums. Sen. Bill Wielchowski's bill, called the "No Child Left Uninsured Act," would let people earning up to three times the poverty rate buy in.

Those ideas have merit. But with the session drawing to a close, there's not time left to explore all the ramifications during this session.

Alaskans will be lucky if the Legislature approves the modest increase included in Davis' bill. And shamed if it doesn't.

BOTTOM LINE: Alaska isn't up to par for government-funded children's health insurance, but the Legislature can fix that.

John Hope Franklin

Historian John Hope Franklin, who died recently in Durham, N.C., at 94, was one of the most remarkable Americans of the 20th century.

In his many books and essays, he brought African Americans out of historical obscurity and made the black experience central to the study of American history. Attention must be paid, he said in his books on slavery, reconstruction, the culture of the old South and runaway slaves. The study of American history was never the same after John Hope Franklin.

Franklin's life was in large measure shaped by his race. He was black, and he grew up in segregated Oklahoma.

In a sense, Franklin had a lifetime feud with the Founding Fathers, posing a question to them that has troubled Americans for more than two centuries. How could Americans fight a revolution in the name of freedom and then write slavery into their Constitution? There is no honorable answer.

Franklin was unusual among scholars in that, through his work, he tried to change both the past and the future. Of course he could not literally change the past -- but he could change our understanding of it. And did. Armed with a more honest and accurate appraisal of the past, Franklin believed, Americans would change their future -- for one thing, eliminate segregation.

John Hope Franklin brought relentless energy to the study of history. He was determined black Americans should have a respected place in the American story, and by the end of his lifetime, they did.

-- Michael Carey

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