Kentucky reaches goal on children's health care

Governor Steve Beshear penned a column for Friday's Herald-Leader. Here's an excerpt:

One year ago, my administration launched an aggressive plan to tackle head-on one of the biggest hurdles to our children's and our state's future: Lack of health insurance.

Numbers showed some 67,000 children lacked health coverage — even though they were eligible for programs like the Kentucky Children's Health Insurance Plan (KCHIP) or Medicaid.

So we set an initial goal of signing up 35,000 of those uninsured children by June 30, 2010.

I'm thrilled to say that we expect to reach that mark six months ahead of schedule.