November 07, 2014

By Mary Kuhlman,

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. – While Illinois ranks in the top 10 states for ensuring that its children have health coverage, a new report finds the state has slipped in its efforts to insure more kids.

According to the Georgetown Center for Children and Families, 12,000 more children in Illinois were without health coverage in 2013 than in 2011. Stephanie Altman, assistant director of health-care justice for the Sargent Shriver National Center on Poverty Law, cited a possible reason for the change.

“The state ended their funding for in-person assistance for the All Kids application agents that helped kids get enrolled a couple of years ago,” she said, “and that is perhaps one of the reasons that we’ve seen a slight slippage in the uninsured rate.”

Altman said she expects to see an improvement in the coming year now that the state is funding navigators to help people enroll in coverage through the Affordable Care Act.

The report said more than 5 million children nationally are without health insurance, and working families living on the brink of poverty are the most likely to have uninsured children.

Joan Alker, who heads the Georgetown Center on Children and Families and co-authored the report, said children from low-income families would benefit the most should Congress decide next year to continue funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program.

“We do know from a lot of research that children who have coverage – be it private or public coverage – do better in school,” she said. “They have better access to primary and preventive health-care services; and their families are protected from bankruptcy that can arise from unpaid medical bills.”

Funding for CHIP is set to expire next September, and Altman said reauthorization is especially important for Illinois because the state receives a higher federal funding match for children under CHIP than for other populations.

“And it’s even going up,” she said, “so, if CHIP is reauthorized, we’re going to get an even higher federal financial match for those children, which helps the state fund children’s health care.”

According to the report, 2013 was the first year in recent history that the uninsured rate for children did not significantly decline from the previous year.

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