Kids and Parents Not Getting Needed CareJune 2008
In the last 10 years
family health insurance seems to have been slowly slipping away. Gone are the days where employers could afford to offer their employees quality medical coverage that could extend to their loved ones. In its place we have skyrocketing insurance costs, leading many employers to offer at best access to private health insurance, at worst, minimal coverage or no coverage at all.
The result has been that the country now struggles with applying coverage to vulnerable populations like children. More than 45 million adults can't afford private health insurance for themselves, and don't have access to family health insurance at all. As a result, there are 5 million uninsured kids across America.
And now the Commonwealth Fund has released a study finding that some states just do a better job of insuring children than others. As a result, the quality of a child's health care, and of their life, depends upon where they live.
According to the
Washington Post, if all states performed as well as the top states - Iowa, Vermont, Maine, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire - then "4.6 million children nationwide would have health insurance; 11.8 million more children would get their recommended yearly medical and dental check-ups; 10.9 million more children would have a "medical home" -- a regular source of care; 1.6 million fewer children would be at risk for developmental delays; and nearly 800,000 more children would be up-to-date on their vaccines."
But the piece of the argument that's missing here is the absence of more affordable family health insurance for working Americans. We need to cover children, and we need to cover their parents so someone will be there to take care of them.
Facts on:
Family Health Insurance
Did you know...
There are 5 million uninsured children in America?
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By forcing parents to rely on
private health insurance they can often get coverage for themselves, or their kids, but rarely both. This is why there are 28 million children covered by Medicaid and 6 million covered by the State Children's Health Insurance Program.
Of course, restructuring our health care system to make family health insurance affordable might not be as easy as providing state or federal coverage for kids, but in the long run it will do a better job of protecting the health of our children, and the adults to take care of them.
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