Why is legislative advocacy important to children and CHOP?
Public policy is critical to children’s health and the ability of CHOP to serve them. Children have different health care needs than adults, they represent only a small fraction of the health care marketplace, and they are the poorest segment of the population. As a consequence, they don’t have the economic clout to command attention sufficiently to ensure all their needs are met. That is why legislation establishing public policies on children’s health is so important. Government programs already pay for the health care of more than a quarter of all children and an even larger percentage of children with special health care needs. Government programs also pay for, on average, nearly half of the patient care provided by children’s hospitals.
