PEDIATRICS Vol. 71 No. 6 June 1983, pp. 981
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Principles of Child Health Care Financing

Committee on Child Health Financing

Whether it is through employment, personal means, a publicily financed plan or a privately purchased plan, the financing of health care must provide for appropriate pediatric care. An unacceptable level of mortality and morbidity persists today among American children, and it is clear that archaic and inequitable financing mechanisms contribute to this circumstance.

Waste, inefficiency, and discrimination against children in current financing systems must give way to improvements that maximize access to comprehensive pediatric care and ensure the quality of the care.

As both the public and private sectors continue to explore the redesign of health financing, the following principles are among those against which the Academy will weigh proposed changes.

1. Children's Right to Access to the Health Care System.

• All children have a right to health care.

• Financial barriers should not prevent children from receiving comprehensive health care.

• When families are unable to provide for adequate health financing, through employment, purchase of a private plan, or personal means, children should be covered by a comprehensive public plan.

• Health care financing systems should permit reasonable options for the patient to choose appropriate providers of services.

2. Standards for Comprehensiveness and Quality Assurance.

• Health care financing systems should cover medical care needed by infants, children, and adolescents, including prenatal consultations, newborn care, preventive care, health supervision, and treatment services through age 21 years.

• Heealth care financing systems should encourage continuity of care by primary care physicians.

• Health care financing systems should recognize the value eof cognitive services in addition to procedural services.

• Health care financing systems should cover physician-directed ancillary and rehabilitative services.