Forget Iraq, global warming and the avian flu threat. When a parent has a sick child, the No. 1 issue is access to health care.

For more than 600,000 Washington residents, that access is perilously limited by lack of health insurance. Unable to afford preventive care and regular checkups, all too many of the working poor and their children wait until health problems are far along – and then go to hospital emergency rooms for treatment. That drives up medical costs for everyone.

Two unheralded bills that were signed into law earlier this month will help efforts to provide more health care options to low-income state residents.

House Bill 2572 created the Small Business Insurance Partnership to help make health care coverage more affordable for small businesses to offer.

Sponsored by state Rep. Dawn Morrell, D-Puyallup, it gives premium assistance to employers with 50 or fewer low-income workers if the employers pay at least 40 percent of a moderate health plan. Workers would pay about 20 percent of the premium.

The legislation was modeled after a similar program in Oregon, which is helping employers provide coverage to about 5,000 low-income workers.

The other legislation that promises to expand access to health care is Senate Bill 6459, sponsored by state Sen. Karen Keiser, D-Kent. It establishes the Community Health Care Collaborative Grant Program to partner with community-based organizations in providing more health care access to uninsured or underinsured Washingtonians, particularly those who are employed.

An example of the kind of program that could be funded is Choice Regional Health Network, an Olympia-based organization that works with low-income uninsured and underinsured people “to connect them to the care they need at the right time and the right place,” says executive director Kristen West.

That could mean steering them away from ERs and into primary care providers’ offices or helping them enroll in the state’s Basic Health Plan. The Legislature expanded the plan by 6,500 slots this session, meaning a total of 106,500 low-income adults can now obtain affordable health coverage through the BHP.

These new efforts won’t solve the health insurance problem in Washington state, but they will alleviate it. Short of a national solution, this kind of chipping away at the edges might be the best that can be done. Every family that gains health insurance is a plus for the state.