You can’t pick up a paper (some of us do still read them) or read a blog today without hearing about health reform. In fact, you have read on our blog about the flurry of activity on the Hill. The good news is that no longer is the argument focused on whether health reform is needed, but on how it should be done.

At the top of the agenda is how to provide the millions of people who are uninsured with high-quality coverage that is affordable. Children have a large stake in this debate–both because of its implications for their families and the work that still is needed to ensure all children have coverage that addresses their unique needs. In CCF’s new report released today “The Last Piece of the Puzzle: Providing High-Quality, Affordable Health Coverage to All Children through National Health Reform,” we attempt to bring these issues to the forefront of the much larger debate by providing a blueprint of what children need from health reform.

The truth is that we have made significant strides in providing children have health coverage, and the new CHIP law took us even further. But CHIP reauthorization was never intended to be the panacea, nor a substitute for broader health reform. Even if the new CHIP law works exactly as intended, millions of children will remain uninsured and even those children who have health insurance will not necessarily get the child-specific care they need. Particularly troubling is that whether a child has health insurance is truly a game of chance– depending on such arbitrary distinctions on whether the child lives in Kansas City, Kansas or Kansas City, Missouri or whether the child’s parent works for a school district or a chain retail store.

In a country where there is remarkably strong public consensus that all children should have the health care coverage that they need to grow and thrive, it is clear that health reform must tackle these remaining gaps in coverage for children. We have come far, but now is the time to put the last pieces of the puzzle in place by:

• Building affordable pathways to coverage for all of America’s children;

• Taking further steps to ensure that every insurance card translates into children receiving the care that they need to develop and grow properly;

• Creating a unified, “no wrong door” enrollment and renewal process to ensure all families can easily access coverage; and

• Strengthening the financing of public programs, which serve as the backbone of the current coverage system for low-income children.

I encourage you to read the report for our specific policy recommendations within each of these puzzle pieces (if you have limited time the Executive Summary provides a good synopsis). In the coming weeks and months, we will continue to post on how to address the needs of children in health reform, which we hope will further the dialogue on this critical issue. And, as always, we welcome your comments and thoughts.