We usually like to point out good news from state health reformers, partly because it helps break down the mindset that fixing health care is Mission Impossible. Today however we've got some bad news: the demise of a brief experiment to make sure that every child in Hawaii has health insurance.

Gov. Linda Lingle's administration cited a budget shortfall as its reason for ending the seven-month old program. A state health official said that families were dropping private coverage so they could get into the state-subsidized plan.

The state said it would stop paying two weeks from now, on Nov. 1, but the private partner Hawaii Medical Service Association (part of Hawaii's Blue Cross Blue Shield) said it will keep the program intact through at least the end of the year, financing it from reserve funds. The state had been paying $50,000 a month, or about $25 per child, with about 2,000 children under age 18 currently enrolled. To be in the HMSA Keiki Care plan, a child had to be uninsured for the previous six moths and not be elibile for other state or federal coverage, such as Medicaid or the Hawaiian SCHIP program.

Overall Hawaii has one of the lowest rates of uninsurance, about 7.5 percent, in the country so it's discouraging to see coverage for preventive care, immunization and emergency services disappear for this young slice of its population.