January 17, 2014
By Stephanie Innes,
Arizona is the only state without an active federal Children’s Health Insurance Program, and the impact has been negative for low-income families, two new studies suggest.
Fourteen thousand children in Arizona lost their health insurance at the end of January 2014 when the state ended its KidsCare program for low-income children, becoming the only state in the country without an active CHIP program, Georgetown researchers found.
The reports, released Friday by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, found that Arizona families experienced chaos, confusion and disruptions in care for their children after the program ended.
[…]
“Arizona’s experience suggests that if CHIP funding is not extended or the program itself is fundamentally changed, our nation’s historic gains in covering children could unravel, making many children worse off than they are today,” Georgetown University Center for Children and Families senior program director Elisabeth Wright Burak wrote in “Children’s Coverage in Arizona: A Cautionary Tale for the Future of the Children’s Health Insurance Program.”
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