From Attorney General Greg Abbott:

The Legislature took a significant step in addressing health care needs for uninsured children when it passed an innovative initiative. Importantly, it won’t cost taxpayers a dime.

Thanks to Sen. Jane Nelson, R-Flower Mound, and Rep. Mark Shelton, R-Fort Worth — who received valuable support from House Judiciary Committee Chairman Todd Hunter, R-Corpus Christi; House Human Services Committee Chairman Patrick Rose, D-Dripping Springs; and Sen. Chris Harris, R-Arlington — a new law will help make affordable health insurance available to hundreds of thousands of children who are served by the child support system but who are not covered by health insurance.

The child support system already serves children whose parents do not live under the same roof. Under state and federal laws, the courts require parents to pay child support as well as medical support to help cover a child’s health care costs. This ensures that parents — not taxpayers — bear financial responsibility for their children.

The health care part of court-ordered child support is covered by what is called a “medical support order.” Before issuing a medical support order, courts must determine whether the child’s parents have employer-sponsored health insurance. If so, courts order the parents to enroll their kids in the employer-sponsored plan.

When employer-sponsored insurance is not available — an increasingly common occurrence — courts already can instruct parents to obtain private insurance for their children. Unfortunately, individual plans can be expensive and difficult to navigate. Parents who cannot obtain individual coverage for their children are ordered to make an additional cash payment called cash medical support.

This is where the Legislature’s new approach comes in. The law provides for a private health insurance plan that will be available to cover children who are already receiving child support. This initiative is called ChildLINK.

ChildLINK does not impose new financial obligations on parents. Rather, it simply shifts their duty from an obligation to pay cash medical support to an obligation to pay health insurance premiums. And, because ChildLINK will make a group plan available to such a large group of children, the coverage should be more affordable than individual coverage.

Unlike typical government insurance programs, ChildLINK offers a free-market solution to the problem. And it comes at no cost to the taxpayers because parents, not government, pay the monthly premiums. The coverage will be by a private insurance company that is selected through a competitive bidding process. So the entire program reflects a creative, private-sector approach to ensuring more children have health care coverage.

There’s no denying that children’s health care is a perennial challenge for Texas—and it is a formidable one. But wherever possible, government should empower parents to take responsibility for supporting their children. Then government should foster free-market, private-sector solutions—not more taxpayer-funded entitlement programs.

This is a promising model for helping Texas children, and I encourage Gov. Rick Perry to sign it into law.