11/29/18
An estimated 3.9 million children were uninsured in 2017, according to new research from Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, up from 3.6 million in 2016. Every state saw an increase in their share of uninsured children; Washington, D.C. did not. The most likely culprits, per the report:
- The Republican pursuit of Obamacare repeal and their success in repealing the individual mandate.
- The Trump administration’s regulations that undermine the health care law.
- Congress allowed an unprecedented lapse in funding authorization for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
- President Trump’s immigration crackdown: Nearly 1 in 4 children in the US have a parent who is an immigrant, and we have strong evidence that an unwelcoming environment for that population leads them to pull out of public programs similar to CHIP and Medicaid.
“All of these changes in the national political and policy realm mark a sharp reversal after many years of successful efforts to reduce the uninsured rate for children and families,” the researchers wrote. The other most notable feature is that most of the children who lost health coverage from 2016 to 2017 live in states that refused to expand Medicaid under Obamacare: three-fourths of the 276,000, according to the Georgetown researchers. In fact, 3 in 10 uninsured kids in the US live in either Florida or Texas, the two biggest states that have refused to expand Medicaid expansion under Obamacare.