The Importance of Affordable Health Insurance for Children

An estimated 12 million American children are uninsured. 9 out of 10 of these children have parents who work, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. 3 in 5 live in two parent families. Some 4 million uninsured children are in the group targeted by the new child health insurance legislation: their parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford private coverage. Millions of parents, who get up every morning, go to work, pay their taxes and play by the rules cannot provide their children with health coverage. There is a need for affordable health insurance for children.

Uncovered Kids Increasing
Every day, the number of children without private insurance grows by thousands. Particularly vulnerable are poor children, Hispanic children, teenagers and children with foreign born parents. The employer-based health insurance system is collapsing for children as businesses cut their support for dependent coverage. Since 1989, children have lost private health coverage at twice the rate of adults, according to Census data. As recently as 1980, the majority of employees at medium-to-large companies had employers who paid 100% of family health insurance costs.

Today, less than a quarter do. More than three-fourths of workers must pay some or all of those costs, and the employee's share averages $1,900 a year, even for HMOs offered by the very largest employers. And 1 in 4 workers today has no access to employment-based family health coverage at any price.

The majority of uninsured children with asthma, and 1 in 3 uninsured children with recurring ear infections, never see a doctor during the year, according to surveys by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Many are hospitalized for acute asthma attacks that could have been prevented, or suffer permanent hearing loss from untreated ear infections.

According to HHS survey data released in July 1997, 1 in 4 uninsured children either uses the hospital emergency room as a regular source of health care or has no regular source of care. The state of Florida found that when parents were helped to buy coverage for their uninsured children, more children received health care in doctors' offices rather than in hospital emergency rooms. Emergency room visits dropped by 70% -- saving the state's taxpayers and consumers $13 million in 1996.

Children sitting in class with pain or discomfort are simply not ready to learn. According to the state of Florida, uninsured children are 25% more likely to miss school. One Pennsylvania insurer found that nearly 1 in 5 uninsured children had untreated vision problems, and children unable to see the blackboard often fall behind in school.