COLUMBIA, S.C. - A national health care advocacy group says more than 12 percent of South Carolina children have no health insurance, an increase from previous years and the 13th-highest rate in the nation.

Families USA said at a news conference Tuesday that 132,000 children were uninsured from 2005 through 2007, about 30 percent more than were without health insurance from 2003 through 2005.

Fifty-five percent of South Carolina’s children have private health insurance, according to the advocacy group’s analysis of U.S. Census Bureau figures. The remainder are covered by Medicaid or some other form of public health insurance.

Of the uninsured kids, more than half would qualify for government health insurance, including the state’s new program designed to provide insurance to an additional 60,000 poor children, according to the report.

The new state program, approved by lawmakers last year, started enrolling children in April. It is for families with incomes between 150 percent and 200 percent of the federal poverty level. That’s a maximum income of $42,400 for a family of four.

So far, the state Health and Human Services Department has signed up 8,300 children.

Sue Berkowitz, executive director of the South Carolina Appleseed Legal Justice Center, said she thinks the state is dragging its feet because Gov. Mark Sanford opposed expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. Lawmakers twice overturned Sanford’s vetoes of the expansion.

“There has been absolutely no effort undertaken by the state to do any kind of outreach or any kind of coordination with other state agencies or the schools,” Berkowitz said. “Clearly, the lack of outreach and the lack of effort to enroll these children is showing up in the numbers.”

State Health and Human Services spokesman Jeff Stensland said the agency expects enrollment to pick up significantly because of kids returning to school.

“Enrollment has been a little slow,” Stensland said. “Typically, we seen an increase during the school year.”

The governor’s office denied that it was responsible for the lack of enrollment. Sanford spokesman Joel Sawyer said lawmakers did not provide funding to market the program extension.

“The governor was proven absolutely right, Medicaid barely has enough money now to provide the benefits to the beneficiaries who are already on the program before even talking about an

expansion,” Sawyer said.

He said the governor would rather see health insurance be more affordable for everyone than expand the government program.

Families USA said about 80 percent of uninsured children in South Carolina have at least one parent who works full time.

But many employers don’t offer health insurance and workers often can’t afford it when it is offered. Families USA said the average yearly cost to an employee in South Carolina to insure a family was $3,000 in 2007.

Berkowitz said her organization, an advocate on several fronts for low-income residents, has created some public service announcements for television and distributed fliers to get the word out about the expanded state health insurance program.

“I think we’re going to be in for a long battle,” Berkowitz said. “And it’s going to be up to the state Legislature to make sure that the agency does what it’s supposed to do and to ensure those efforts move forward, because we know the governor and the agency are not going to do it on their own volition.”

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