Many children are going without health insurance, despite the state’s universal insurance law, because of confusing rules about how to sign up and when to renew the government-subsidized coverage, according to findings to be released today by consumer advocates.

A monthlong campaign to search out and enroll many of the estimated 3,300 remaining uninsured children has resulted in new coverage for 1,479 youngsters, according to Health Care for All, a Boston-based consumer group that is leading the initiative. But advocates say the campaign has also highlighted burdensome paperwork requirements that often result in children being booted off of Medicaid, the state and federal program for low-income people, though they are still eligible.

Families are required to re-enroll every year, and children can be cut from the program if parents do not notify the state of changes in address, income, or employment. Each time a person is dropped and then re-enrolled, it costs the state about $200 in administrative costs, according to a University of Massachusetts report last year that suggested that eliminating those costs could save the state millions of dollars.

“We are delighted by the results of our enrollment campaign, but it points to the broader problem,’’ said Amy Whitcomb Slemmer, Health Care for All’s executive director. The group now plans a campaign to educate parents about how to keep children insured, and legislation has been filed to make it easier for children to stay on Medicaid.

Massachusetts has one of the highest coverage rates for children in the nation. The state’s latest count indicates that 99.8 percent of youngsters had insurance in 2010, up from 98.1 percent the previous year. But advocates and the state hope to get all children insured.

Teams of workers from a consortium of 66 hospitals and community health centers scoured schools and communities during the past month to connect uninsured children with coverage. Some used Facebook to alert followers about the mission or detailed the campaign in their monthly newsletters to community groups. The nearly 1,500 they enrolled are those who have not had state subsidized coverage for at least one year and are considered new enrollees.

Advocates said many are new to the state or are from families whose insurance ended when parents lost their employment.

“We do a lot of outreach at career centers, and we have seen a lot of people out of work,’’ said Eleni Kontogli, director of marketing at Harbor Health Services, which includes Geiger Gibson and Neponset health centers in Dorchester and the Mid Upper Cape Community Health Center in Hyannis.

Harbor Health typically enrolls about four children a month, but during the past month’s campaign signed up 36, Kontogli said.

In addition to these new enrollees, there were many others who were signed up after they had been bumped off state coverage, sometimes a couple of times in one year, Kontogli and other advocates said.

Jackie Coogan, president of the Everett-based Joint Committee for Children’s Healthcare, said her organization newly enrolled 18 children in Medicaid in the past month but reenrolled 41 who had recently lost coverage.

A report last year by the Center for Health Law and Economics at UMass Medical School found that in an average month, more than 12,000 adults and children who were dropped from subsidized coverage, Commonwealth Care and MassHealth, for an administrative reason within the preceding 90 days were reenrolled. That amounted to nearly a quarter of all residents who were disenrolled for administrative reasons, a pattern that suggests many of the residents probably were still eligible despite the lost coverage, the report said.

Senator James Eldridge, an Acton Democrat, has proposed legislation to ease the problem and provide youngsters with consistent access to needed health care by allowing children and families to remain on state-subsidized coverage continuously for a year, even if the family’s income or address changes. The bill would require Dr. JudyAnn Bigby, state health and human services secretary, to seek federal approval for the change, because the federal government funds half of the state’s Medicaid health insurance program.

Thirty-three other states have already enacted similar legislation, according to federal figures.

Bigby said in an interview with the Globe last month that her agency is working to streamline the enrollment process so that coverage for children is not so often dropped inadvertently. But Bigby has not sought federal permission for the continuous coverage provision spelled out in Eldridge’s bill, according to spokeswoman Paulette Song.

Advocates say the monthlong enrollment campaign is just the first step. The next challenge, they said, is to help parents understand how to keep that insurance active. Consumer groups will be distributing personalized refrigerator magnets, bookmarks, and other materials that will include the date by which a family must submit an application to renew its state-subsidized coverage each year, and contact information for help with that process. The materials also list specific actions, such as a change in address or income, that require them to notify state officials within 10 days or risk losing coverage.

By Johanna Kaiser The Associated Press / June 11, 2011

BOSTON—Forgotten paperwork, returned mail, and a lack of information are keeping thousands of Massachusetts children from receiving stable health care coverage in a state known for its far-reaching health care initiative.

Although Massachusetts has the highest rate of insured children in the county — more than 99 percent — health care advocates and lawmakers say thousands of eligible children still go on and off the state’s Medicaid program, known as MassHealth, during the year because of administrative issues and other paperwork problems.

“Often times children were insured but got knocked off because of re-enrollment glitches,” said Victoria Bonney of Health Care for All, a non-profit organization that advocates for changes to the state’s health care laws.

The organization estimates that about 3,000 children are uninsured at some point during the course of a year.

The “glitches” can include everything from parents forgetting to renew their insurance plan on time to neglecting to inform MassHealth of a new address.

Because many of these families remain financially eligible for MassHealth, many re-enroll within a short time, leading to unnecessary administrative costs, advocates said.

Each enrollment or re-enrollment costs the state approximately $200.

Health Care for All and 66 other organizations are working to prevent these re-enrollments by leaving postcards with information and important phone numbers at community centers and schools. Groups are also handing out bookmarks and magnets that have deadlines for paperwork and phone numbers for information.

“Every day when you reach in for the milk, there’s simple reminder,” Bonney said.

The organizations just finished a month-long drive to register as many children as possible for health coverage. Numbers will be released Tuesday when the groups highlight their efforts at a Statehouse event.

Lawmakers are also pushing to ensure that children remain insured.

A bill designed to reduce costs and keep children on health care plans takes aim at the administrative snafus.

“This is a very significant problem. There are a number of ways child can fall through gaps,” said Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Acton, who is co-sponsoring the measure that would allow eligible children to stay on state health insurance for a continuous 12-month period after they apply.

Under his bill, Eldridge said there would be “an automatic presumption that once they apply, they are covered for 12 months.”

If a parent forgets to file a particular form, or gets a temporary job, the child would not be immediately taken off MassHealth only to re-enroll a short time later, under the proposal.

Similar laws are in place in 32 other states.

Patrick Michaud, spokesman for Harbor Health Services, said his group has enrolled many uninsured children whose parents did not know they were eligible for state health insurance programs. Harbor Health Services is one of the organizations working with Health Care for All to ensure as many children as possible are covered.

“Their parents were unemployed because of the economic downturn and they weren’t aware they had the option,” Michaud said.

Others were the children of immigrants who had green cards for less than five years. They qualified for MassHealth, even though their parents did not.

Enrollment in health care plans in Massachusetts has soared since the state passed its landmark 2006 health care law.

The Massachusetts initiative, which became a model for the national health care law signed by President Barack Obama, requires nearly everyone in the state to have health insurance or face financial penalties.

LITTLETON — Battles over parking spaces at the Grimes Lane commuter rail lot should subside this summer after construction of a new $2 million parking lot finishes in July, state officials confirmed yesterday.

Secretary of Housing and Economic Development Greg Bialecki announced the awarding of the $2 million grant to the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority, part of $11 million in total improvements being made through federal stimulus dollars.

MBTA officials said the new lot, which will feature 45 additional spaces, will open on July 1. The addition means there will now be a total of 195 parking spots available for area commuters, according to officials.

State Rep. Jim Arciero, a Westford Democrat, wrote in an email that he was happy to hear that “critical funding” was secured and added that the new facility “will further accomodate job growth and greater economic activity in the area.”

Town Administrator Keith Bergman wrote, “We’ve been after this money for the T since March 2010.”

Bergman, resurrecting a favorite quote from a Sun story at the time, said, “My still-favorite quote from that … ‘I went to Niki Tsongas’ office and told her chief of staff, Brian Martin, ‘I only need one minute and $2 million.’”

Buying the 8.5-acre chunk of land was crucial, since replacing the old single-platform station will eliminate the only 47 spots currently available to commuters.

Removing those MBTA-owned spaces means the only available parking would have been available on an adjacent piece of private land, which is allowed to hold 100 cars that are charged a monthly parking fee.

The private-lot owners have offered to sell the land to the MBTA for $1.5 million. Building 100 more spots will cost an estimated $500,000, according to state records.

Arciero said state Sen. Jamie Eldridge, an Acton Democrat, worked with him to secure the grant. Selectmen voted last year to support an effort to land the funding.

In an emailed statement, Eldridge said the news is “great” for Littleton residents, “particularly the town officials who have worked so hard to make the case for this project.”

The modernization of Littleton Station is part of the state’s Fitchburg Commuter Rail Improvement Project. MBTA officials said the project should be completed by December 2013 and will include $150 million in improvements, including rail replacement and the repair of six bridges along a 50-mile track extending from Boston to Fitchburg.

The line contains the oldest infrastructure within the MBTA system and is used each day by roughly 10,000 riders.

The new parking lots will include upgrades such as the MBTA’s parking payment system and an off-street passenger drop-off area that will accommodate shuttle buses and private vehicles.

As the economy sputters its way back from the worst crisis since the Great Depression, local schools and lawmakers are trying to make financial literacy a larger part of students’ education.

Many districts already offer the subject as an elective course or seminar, but efforts are under way to train all students in money management.

“A college freshman has an average debt of $1,500,” said Sen. Jamie Eldridge, D-Acton. “Part of it is not having enough financial education in high school to prepare them for the real world.”

Eldridge is a sponsor of one of several bills in the Legislature right now that would make personal financial literacy a curriculum requirement for all schools in the state. The unit would teach students about balancing a checkbook, borrowing money, investing and planning for retirement, among other banking-related topics.

“It would also highlight some of the practices some of the more unscrupulous credit companies and lenders use … to get college students to spend beyond their means,” Eldridge said.

Several local school leaders also want their financial education offerings to do more for more of their students. Ashland High School, for example, offers a financial seminar to seniors as well as an online economics elective class, but Catherine Stickney, the district’s director of curriculum, assessment and instruction, said they aren’t enough.

“In my opinion, it should be more than that,” she said. “We know the need is to expand that into a course.”

Much of the heightened interest in financial literacy comes from the recession, which exposed how much of the economic and financial systems Americans don’t fully understand. Many districts now want to restore training that was dropped during education reform in the early 1990s, said Albert Mercado, a guidance, career and academic supervisor at Milford High School.

“Many of those classes were wiped away because they weren’t seen as college-readiness courses,” he said. “But we saw the financial chaos that happened. We were hearing stories of students going off to college not understanding the value of a dollar and getting into trouble.”

Milford High offers an elective in financial literacy, but only about 24 students can take it each semester, Mercado said. The unit will be expanded to become a graduation requirement starting with the class of 2013.

Natick High Assistant Superintendent Karen LeDuc said she doesn’t envision Natick taking a similar step, but their schools do plan to take a personal finances elective online to open it up to more students.

“I don’t think it will ever become a requirement of graduation,” she said. “I just think it’s a good tool to have.”

Sen. Karen Spilka, D-Ashland, who sponsored her own financial literacy bill, said she doesn’t expect the course to become mandatory for graduation. She said her legislation is geared to find ways to work financial training into math curriculum, so school staff isn’t burdened with new tasks.

“Many schools already do something like this,” she said. “This is an effort to make it consistent across the state.”

Several similar bills are circulating on Beacon Hill, and State Treasurer Steve Grossman is working to reach a consensus on a single piece of legislation, Spilka said. After coming close in past years, Eldridge said he thinks the effort may see a breakthrough this year.

“I think it has an excellent chance,” he said. “I feel confident we can pass it this session.”

Stickney said she’ll be watching to see what the Legislature does. While she supports expanded financial literacy education, she said school leaders in Ashland are waiting for guidance from the state as they get ready to get the district’s curriculum lined up with the recently adopted Common Core State Standards.

“We’re definitely looking forward to that,” she said. “Students going to college are going into debt trying to pursue their dreams. I think wholeheartedly that’s a piece we need to provide for them.”

During the trial of former House Speaker Sal DiMasi, one thing has become clear: there are some very close relationships between some state lawmakers and private contractors.

Is there a “pay to play” culture on Beacon Hill? How can we minimize the risk of lawmakers getting too close to state contractors?

We dive into the debate over money at the State House.

LISTEN NOW

Guests:

• State Sen. Jamie Eldridge, state senator
• Pam Wimot, executive director, Massachusetts Common Cause

The trial of former House Speaker Sal DiMasi is still ongoing, but Massachusetts voters don’t need a verdict to recognize that the pay-for-play culture on Beacon Hill is even sleazier and more freewheeling than imagined.

There is an intellectual case to be made that what DiMasi did — represent a software manufacturer and use his political clout to wheedle the state into buying a $17.5 million system it did not need — is merely unethical, maybe even reprehensible, but still perfectly legal. As is so often the case, if DiMasi is found guilty, it will be for trying to cover up what he clearly did.

In about two weeks, a jury will decide these fine points.

Guilty or not, DiMasi violated the public trust. DiMasi betrayed his constituents in the North End and elsewhere; he betrayed his colleagues in the House — at least those who conduct themselves with honor; and he betrayed the citizens of the commonwealth who, through the agency of their district representatives, chose DiMasi to superintend the greater good.

It is a measure of how deeply ingrained the culture of corruption is on Beacon Hill that the efforts of Democratic State Senator James B. Eldridge of Acton to enact legislation that would bar state contractors from donating to political campaigns died last year in the House and Senate.

As the Worcester Telegram has noted: “The ability of state contractors to influence legislation and the administration remains an open question, in part because they are allowed to pass large amounts of cash to elected representatives and political candidates in the form of campaign contributions.” The admirable legislation proposed by Eldridge deserves to be resurrected.

By itself, however, it would not be enough.

Elected officials must also be prohibited from representing or receiving retainers from companies or individuals that seek to do business with the state.

It is about ethics. It is a matter of common sense. No one can serve two masters. Since the taxpayers pay the salaries of elected officials, the public should assert its right to their undivided service.

That’s what Connecticut did years ago when it was hit hard by a plague of scandals involving contractors.

Governor Deval Patrick, who had his reputation bruised in court after he effectively testified that he rolled over to please DiMasi, should lead the effort.

Earlier this year, the Phoenix wrongly suggested that Patrick was preparing to take a dive when it became clear that the Parole Board, by failing to execute its duty, had released a dangerous criminal who later murdered a police officer in the course of a North Shore robbery.

Patrick, in fact, acted with considerable forethought and cleaned house with dispatch.

As soon as the DiMasi trial is over, whatever the verdict, Patrick should move that the legislature ban all elected officials from accepting contributions (in cash or in kind) and from representing interests that do business with the state.

Unless something were to radically change, it seems that the current House and Senate leadership are temperamentally unable — or unwilling — to do the right thing.

Democracy, said H.L. Mencken, is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.

That is a fair assessment of how matters now sit in Massachusetts. The voters are (at worst) suckers and (at best) complacent.

Reform, if it is ever to be realized, must come from the top. Step up, governor, and do your duty.

State Sen. Jamie Eldridge’s bill to reform state land-use laws just got bumped up the priority list, thanks to the Lowell Statehouse delegation that is backing its passage.

The recent controversy in Lowell’s historic Highlands neighborhood, where a developer is building a home on an undersized lot, after subdividing a bigger lot, has put the sanctity of local zoning laws on the radar screen.

The Lowell project is so out of character with other stately homes built on Livingston Avenue, which was designed by a Lowell architect in the 1880s, that it debases even the most basic instincts of urban land use. In short, it’s a crime.

Yet under state law, it’s legal.

Eldridge’s measure, called the Comprehensive Land Use Reform and Partnership Act, would eliminate the loophole that allows developers to override local zoning laws to build homes on smaller-than-required lots that meet miminum frontage and access standards.

Eldridge’s rural district has witnessed a sharp increase in developers using the loophole to buy bigger lots, subdivide them, and build homes without local approval. These ANR — Approval Not Required — lots have been on the state’s books for 35 years.

The economics of building single-family homes in communities that require a minimum 2 acres per home is most likely responsible for the rise in ANR projects.

Attempts to change the the ANR stipulation have failed numerous times, a tribute to the strength of the homebuilders’ lobby on Beacon Hill. Yet what was once a strictly suburban issue has spread to all communities, and legislators appear poised for action. The Sun endorses a retooling of the ANR provision to make local zoning boards the absolute authority for approval.

The city of Lowell, likewise, has to tighten up its zoning code so that the loophole is rendered useless.

Still, we find it disheartening that city officials didn’t do more to scrutinize this project last October when the developer, John Faneros, first applied to have the bigger lot subdivided. City Engineer Lisa DeMeo approved Faneros’ application even though the new lot size squeezed by the zoning code by a mere 4 inches. The Planning Board also signed off. Shouldn’t a red flag have gone up? Interestingly, the city is now planning to get a second opinion from an independent land surveyor to determine if the lot size does in fact meet the requirements.

We can see why Highlands residents are disgusted. They’ve been calling City Hall for months, but officials have taken the company line that there is nothing they can do. The project is legal and that’s that, the residents have been told.

What’s legal and what’s right are not always one in the same. That’s why laws are changed. The Livingston Avenue project is a case in point. City Hall should have been working to shut this project down or at least delay it for legislative review. Instead, a neighborhood’s historic character has been violated without a fight.

LOWELL — Archaic. Atrocious. Byzantine.

Those are just several of the adjectives used this week to describe a decades-old state law that has allowed Christian Hill resident John Faneros to build a tiny, single-family house across the city in a Highlands neighborhood full of Victorian homes, many of them more than 100 years old. The house, under construction on a subdivided lot at 113 Livingston Ave., has enraged neighbors and city councilors.

The $106,000 house just squeaks by dimensional requirements. More infuriating, say neighbors, is that it will ruin the neighborhood’s historic character — an intangible element that recent city rezoning efforts have sought to maintain at all costs.

City officials agree it’s likely too late to stop the Faneros project, described by the local state representative, Kevin Murphy, as “atrocious.” But if legislation filed by state Sen. Jamie Eldridge is adopted, future projects proposed under the same ANR statute, or “approval not required,” will be scrutinized and possibly rejected.

The Faneros project received no local examination because it’s being built under the state’s ANR statute, also known as Chapter 40A. Under the 35-year-old law, proposals get the green light providing the building lot meets three criteria: It is 7,000 square feet or larger, has a minimum 55 feet of frontage, and has street access. The Livingston Avenue project meets all three.

“The law is just bad policy,” Eldridge said. “It is likely one of the most archaic laws of its kind in the country. At the bare minimum, local planning boards should have the authority to conduct a review on all subdivisions.”

Besides striking ANR language from the books, the Eldridge legislation, known as the Comprehensive Land Use Reform and Partnership Act, would:

* Encourage consistency between local plans and land-use regulations.

* Provide communities with new plan-implementation tools, like impact fees.

* Eliminate so-called “grandfathering.”

Eldridge’s legislation was the focus of a hearing last week at the Statehouse in front of the Joint Committee on Municipalities and Regional Government. Committee Research Director Kurt Steigel, who called the hearing productive, said there is “universal agreement” to removing ANR language — except from the home builders lobbies.

Anthony Flint, a fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, called Chapter 40A “Byzantine.” He recently wrote this about ANR: “A rule that says as long as a proposed subdivision is along an established road, the project doesn’t need to go before the local planning board. It’s not that rules are lax. It’s that there are no rules. Builders don’t have to come before local government at all.”

Approval not required, Flint wrote, “can only be described as pro-builder.”

In an interview, Flint said similar bills have been defeated annually in the Legislature, primarily at the hands of powerful home-builder lobbies.

“It’s classic politics,” Flint said. “There’s a great deal of lobbying muscle up there.”

Roland Mainville, president of the Tewksbury-based Northeast Builders Association of Massachusetts, declined to comment on the Eldridge legislation.

Representatives of the association’s umbrella organization, the Home Builders Association of Massachusetts, testified at last week’s hearing.

Mark Kablack, chairman of association’s Public Policy Committee, said the organization is reluctant to support any bill that would eliminate ANR.

Kablack said permitting is often “expensive, time-consuming and not streamlined.”

He added: “More and more across the state, elected boards are under pressure to deny or overly condition a project on which they have no jurisdiction. My members are concerned about that.”

Opposing a project based solely on architectural grounds is too subjective, Kablack added.

Murphy said the Eldridge legislation “should be expedited.” Fellow Lowell Reps. Thomas Golden and David Nangle also said they’re leaning strongly toward supporting the Eldridge bill.

“I drove by that project just the other day and said ‘whoa,’ ” Nangle said.

But Murphy also said the city’s claim that it is powerless to stop the Faneros project is untrue.

“I get a kick out of Bernie Lynch and Adam Baacke laying it at our feet,” Murphy said, referring to the city manager and the assistant city manager/Division of Planning and Development director, respectively. “The city zoning code is not restrictive enough.”

Baacke disagreed, explaining again that the ANR statute has prevented city planners from having more oversight.