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Family Coverage: Covering Parents Along with Their Children

Framing the Issue As the Institute of Medicine concluded in a major report it issued in 2002, health insurance is “a family matter.” 1 Family coverage promotes child and family well-being. Parents without health care coverage are less able to access care.2 When parents lack the medical care they need their ability to work, support their families, and care for their children is compromised. Parent coverage promotes children’s coverage. Studies and state experience have consistently shown that covering parents promotes coverage and access to care for children.3 Low-income families with uninsured parents are three times as likely to have uninsured children compared to parents with private coverage or Medicaid.4 With the cost of private insurance rising far more rapidly than earnings, parents with a full-time, full-year job no longer have any guarantee of coverage through their employer. This is especially true for lower-wage earners, who are often employed at small firms or at the type of jobs that are less likely to offer coverage. Employer-based insurance has been declining for all wager earners, but the steepest declines over the past six years have been among the lowest-income workers.5 Medicaid and CHIP have been very successful in reducing the uninsured rate among low-income children, and Medicaid can help states achieve positive results for their uninsured parents as well.6 Federal Medicaid funding is available to states to cover parents—no waiver is required. Go To Next Section: Data

Table of Contents Summary Framing the Issue Data Where States Stand Legislative Authority Strategies and Considerations Resources Download Brief (PDF)

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Footnotes

1. Institute of Medicine, Health Insurance Is a Family Matter, (National Academies Press: Washington, DC; September, 2002). Back

2. Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, “Fact Sheet: Health Coverage for Low-Income Parents,” (February 2007). Sixty-nine percent of uninsured low-income adults had no preventive care in the previous 12 months and half of uninsured low-income adults in fair or poor health had not had visited a doctor’s office within a year (compared to 27 percent of low-income insured adults with similar health problems). Back

3. S. Rosenbaum & R. Perez Trevino Whittington, “Parental Health Insurance Coverage as Child Health Policy: Evidence from the Literature,” First Focus (June 2007); and L. Ku & M. Broaddus, “Coverage of Parents Helps Children, Too,” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (October 20, 2006). Back

4. K. Schwartz, “Spotlight on Uninsured Parents: How a Lack of Coverage Affects Parents and Their Families,” Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured (June 2007). Back

5. E. Gould, “The Erosion of Employment-based Insurance,” Economic Policy Institute (November 2007). Back

6. For example, see L. Dubay & G. Kenney, “Addressing Coverage Gaps for Low-Income Parents,” Health Affairs, 23: 225-234 (2004). Back