LaCHIP: Now Enrolling Qualifying Children for FREE Health Care

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LaCHIP: Now Enrolling Qualifying Children for FREE Health Care backed by Louisiana
Christus Schumpert Hospital supports ‘Louisiana Children’s Health Insurance Program’

By: Tom Pace, Executive Editor, SBLive!
December 21st, 2007


“Each year, tens of thousands of children in Louisiana go without health care because their families cannot afford insurance.” So reads the flyer distributed by The Louisiana Children’s Health Insurance Program, (LaCHIP). The bottom line: Too many children in Louisiana under the age of 19, are going without medical treatment.

To better understand LACHIP’s mission, Michelle Lafitte, LaChip Marketing Specialist with CHRISTUS Schumpert Health System and Sutton Children’s Hospital in Shreveport, describes it this way: “We want to identify as many uninsured children in Caddo Parish as humanly possible… to get them insured and secure a medical home for those children.”

“LaCHIP is primarily for working families with modest incomes…however, it also includes grandparents who are raising their children's children, single mothers, and step-parents,” said Lafitte, and she continued, “LaCHIP has been in Louisiana since 1998, but still there are some 2,500 children in Caddo Parish, who are LaCHIP eligible, but not enrolled. That’s our real mission: find those eligible kids, and get them quality health care.”

Interested parents can fill out an on-line application at: www.lachip.org, or call 1-877-2LaCHIP (252-2447). They can also call Michelle Lafitte directly and she will point you in the right direction. You can reach her by e-mail: michelle.lafitte@CHRISTUShealth.org, or call her office: 318-681-7525. Please consider inviting her to any health fairs, that would help in the CHRISTUS Schumpert's efforts to get uninsured kids to age 18, covered by LaCHIP.