It’s constitutional – deal with it
The number of uninsured children in Texas fell by almost 100,000 during the first year of full implementation of the Affordable Care Act, signalling a potential trend across all age groups, a new study by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation finds.
The findings were welcomed in a place with stubbornly high uninsured rates, particularly among the poor and racial and ethnic minority groups.
“This is good news. Texas is a state with a comparably young population, so the more of them that are insured the bigger the impact for the entire population,” said Elena Marks, president and CEO of Houston’s Episcopal Health Foundation.
The thought is that as parents find coverage options for their children they are more likely to learn about coverage options for themselves, which will lead to higher overall coverage rates.
In 2013, as the health-care law took hold, 977,000 Texas children were without coverage, the new research shows. That equates to 13.2 percent of the state’s under-18 population. By 2014, that uninsured rate had fallen to 11.8 percent.
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Typically children are insured in greater numbers than adults since states, including Texas, offer safety net coverage through the Children’s Health Insurance Program, also known as CHIP, which provides low-cost insurance for children whose parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid or do not have other coverage.
“Despite the politicking around health policy lately, I think we can all agree that coverage for kids is essential for their healthy development and to get a healthy start in life,” Katherine Hempstead, who directs health insurance issues for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, said in an interview Monday.
Despite the gains, 880,000 Texas children – the highest number nationally – still have no coverage.
That includes 533,000 Hispanic children, Guerra-Cardus said. She added that 94 percent of those are U.S. citizens.
The Robert Wood Johnson study shows nearly half of the nation’s 5 million uninsured children live in Texas and five other states: California, Florida, Georgia, Arizona and New York.
The research provides a baseline to track future children’s coverage trends, Hempstead said, adding that the report will be duplicated next year.
I couldn’t find a copy of the study when I looked, but there was a lot of news coverage of it out there when I googled around. It goes without saying that having healthy children is one of the best investments that a society can make, but then our state government threw 250,000 kids off of CHIP in 2003 in the name of “fiscal conservatism”, so I guess it doesn’t go without saying. There’s a reason why the reforms of the Affordable Care Act have had such a profound impact in Texas – there was so, so much that needed to be done. And as long as the current crew is in charge, there’s still so much more left to do.