This survey shows that families are still reeling from the recession, feeling pessimistic about the future, and struggling to afford health care. Health care costs are squeezing families financially, forcing them to make hard choices. For this reason, their goal for health care reform is overwhelmingly to make health care more affordable and to lower premiums and copayments that people must pay for their insurance coverage.

The country has made significant progress covering children. Health reform has the potential to build upon this success by opening new doorways so that all children have quality and affordable health insurance and providing coverage options to their parents and the other adults in their lives. This fact sheet provides basic information on the coverage pathways for children and their families in the current health reform bills (HR 3962 and the Senate Finance Committee bill).

This fact sheet provides a description of the key Medicaid, CHIP, and low-income provisions in the merged health reform bill released by the House and amended on November 3, 2009.

This report provides a first look at state activity after the passage of CHIPRA and the availability of increased Medicaid funding in the economic stimulus package. It finds that despite unprecedented fiscal challenges, all but a few states held steady on children's health coverage, and twenty-three states took steps to move forward. This progress on children's coverage has important implications as the nation moves forward with health reform.

Because they are growing and developing, children have a distinct set of health care needs that evolve over time and differ from those of adults. Moreover, while as a group children are relatively healthy, one in seven has special health care needs. Given that under reform, many children will be covered through private plans and some children who are currently covered through public programs may be shifted to private plans, it is particularly important to consider how well private plans might meet children’s health care needs.

This side-by-side compares the House bill (H.R. 3200) as approved by the three committees of jurisdiction and the Senate HELP Committee bill. It focuses primarily on the provisions affecting children and low-income populations.

As drafted, the HELP Committee’s legislation would extend coverage to millions of Americans and take major steps toward transforming the health care delivery system. However, the legislation, as of June 9, 2009, lacks details on some key areas that must be addressed in order to fully evaluate its implications, particularly for children.This brief provides a summary of the Affordable Health Choices Act, an analysis of its implications for children, and a chart outlining key provisions of the legislation.

The nation has made significant progress in covering children, but nine million children still lack insurance and many more are at risk of not receiving the health care services that they need to develop and grow properly. To address these issues, children will need to be an integral part of the much larger health reform debate now underway. This report provides a blueprint of what children and families need from health reform, including an overview of where the remaining gaps are for children’s coverage, and recommendations on the key challenges that must be addressed in order to complete the puzzle.

Health care reform is once again a front and center issue. While the policy debates are just beginning, broad consensus exists that a newly reformed system ought to build on the components of the current system, including the Medicaid program. This means that a central question underlying health care reform is: How can each of those components work together to meet national health care reform goals? This question raises many important issues, including how to best build on and strengthen the Medicaid program.