Medicaid Expansion Credited For Getting Record Number Of Kids Insurance In Ohio
By Catherine Candisky
More than 95 percent of Ohio children have health coverage as the uninsured rate fell to historic lows in the wake of Obamacare.
A new report from the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families credits Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act for the decline in uninsured children.
In Ohio, 26,000 children gained coverage between 2013 and 2015, the analysis showed, leaving an estimated 115,000 under the age of 19 without health insurance.
The state’s rate of uninsured children during that time fell to 4.4 percent, down from 5.3 percent, and just under the national average.
Advocates for children applauded Ohio leaders for the 2014 expansion of Medicaid, the tax-funded health care program for the poor and disabled. The move, they said, helped more kids gain coverage since the 1997 creation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, a joint federal-state program for children whose families have modest incomes but now low enough to qualify for Medicaid.
Under Ohio guidelines, children in families with incomes up to 200 percent of poverty, $48,600 a year for a family of four, qualify for government coverage.
“Ohio leaders made the right decisions to invest in the health and well-being of Ohio’s children and their parents,†said Brandi Slaughter, chief executive officer of Voices for Ohio Children. “Today’s children will become tomorrow’s leaders and we need to make sure they get what they need to grow up healthy and reach their full potential.”
Nationwide, 1.7 million children gained coverage between 2013 and 2015, as the rate of uninsured kids dropped to 4.8 percent, down from 7.1 percent.
Put another way, the number of uninsured children declined by almost a third, dropping from 5.2 million in 2013 to 3.5 million in 2015.
Most newly insured kids acquired health coverage through Medicaid expansion and SCHIP, the report found, while employer-sponsored coverage remained stable, covering 46.5 percent of children nationwide.
“Children’s uninsurance rates have been declining over the past 30 years as a result of a phased-in expansion of Medicaid to all children below the poverty level in the 1980s and the creation of CHIP in 1997,” according to the report.
“The historic improvement for children between 2013 and 2015 is no doubt due largely to the impact of the Affordable Care Act.”
Ohio was among 41 states seeing improvements in coverage while only in Wyoming did rates decline. The rest remained about the same.
Vermont had the lowest uninsured rate, 1 percent, and Alaska had the highest, 10.6 percent.
Of the remaining 3.5 million uninsured children, half live in the South, with one in five living in Texas.
