No Shelter from the Storm: America’s Uninsured Children
Campaign for Children’s Health Care
September 2006
Findings
There were more than 9 million uninsured children (ages 0-18 years) in the U.S. in 2005. One out of every nine children is uninsured.
The majority of uninsured children-88.3 percent-come from families where at least one parent works.
Among uninsured children living with a parent, more than half-59 percent-live in two-parent households.
In more than half of all two-parent families with uninsured children, both parents work.
Overall, uninsured children are nearly five times more likely than insured children to have at least one delayed or unmet health care need.
Over the past 10 years, the advent of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) and the increased push for children’s coverage that the new program created have led to marked declines in the number of uninsured children. Nevertheless, a great deal of work remains to be done. The most recent Census data show that, for the first time since 1998, the rate of uninsured children increased, from 10.8 percent to 11.2 percent.
Failure to ensure that all children in this country have health coverage is shortsighted and harmful. Children are the future of this country, and the policy choices the nation makes now can have long-term effects on who today’s children grow up to be. At the very least, we must ensure that each child gets the best possible start, which includes high-quality, affordable health coverage.
http://www.childrenshealthcampaign.org/tools/reports/Uninsured-Kids-report.PDF
Comment:
By Don McCanne, MD
Incrementalists have been touting the one health care reform “success” of the past few decades: the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). Yet, after a decade under the program, 9 million children remain uninsured and the numbers are increasing, and those children have five times the amount of unmet health care needs as insured children. If this is the definition of success, then how would they define failure?
We will never have health care coverage for everyone until we establish policies that ensure that it is automatic, life long, and universal. Nothing short of national health insurance will do.