As The News Tribune recently noted, both this year and last, the Legislature appropriated more money for programs that pay for children’s medical care. The projected cost has jumped from $29 million to $45 million to cover roughly 50,000 uninsured children.

Understandably, the missed projection has some legislators upset, which has unfortunately led to some misplaced debate. Some legislators are mistakenly placing the health care debate into the fight over immigration.

That the debate is misplaced is obvious when you get down to some of the unemotional facts, the first of which is that insuring any child is not a cost as much as it is an investment with a very good return. The cost of a single hospitalization from the preventable medical complications of an untreated common condition like an ear infection is the same as two years’ worth of continuous health coverage for children.

It simply is common sense to make an investment in health insurance that gets children early treatment, reduces stress on emergency and inpatient care facilities which would otherwise act as the place of first treatment, and at the same time saves hospitals literally millions of dollars in nonreimbursed emergency care and inpatient care costs.

Neither the illnesses of the children nor the costs associated with their treatment are influenced one iota whether the child is an immigrant or not.

The bottom line is, both the kids and those who give them medical care will be stronger and better off for having health care coverage, and that means our communities will be stronger, too.

The bill providing money for insured care is about primary care and prevention, and links physicians’ pay with performance on measures like increasing immunizations, all strategies for reducing future costs. We save money and have stronger communities for every kid helped, immigrant or not. We should therefore make sure every child has health care coverage, if for nothing else than our own fiscal self-interest.

Add to that reasoning the fact that a child’s health issues are often a major factor in their success or failure in school. Therefore, the return on the investment for insuring children increases even more, immigrant child or not. Healthy children are more likely to succeed in school and later in life, reducing negative social costs on society and increasing the taxpayer’s return on investment as a result of more positive life outcomes.

Finally, for all the talk about the importance of the family, it makes perfect common sense to put our money where our collective mouth is around that issue.

Many of those uninsured immigrant children are siblings of immigrant American-citizen children who do qualify for Medicaid or other services. The nonqualifying child simply hasn’t been here the required five years yet.

Without insurance, these children are separated from their family health care providers and face numerous administrative barriers not faced by their brothers or sisters.

The decision to provide health care unites children in enrolled families onto the same case, synchronizes their recertification dates, combines premium amounts, and cuts through the administrative barriers.

Insured children and families are together as they proceed through the health care system, and that seems an important consideration if we really believe stronger families are important.

A hard look at the numbers suggests that insuring all of the uninsured, both children and adults, is a strategy with a high public return on our investment.

But the reality is that we, as a state, are not in a fiscal position to do all of that at the moment.

So, common sense should tell us that our initial investment in health care should focus on the best immediate return using public investment dollars while accomplishing the greatest common good – insuring as many uninsured children as possible.

Rick Allen is president of United Way of Pierce County.