Denver Post
October 24, 2012
By Michael Booth
Colorado made a dent in the number of children without health insurance from 2009 to 2011, but fell a bit further behind the national average, according to a new study by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute.
Using Census Bureau data, Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families calculated the number of uninsured children under 18 in Colorado at about 116,000 in 2011, down from 124,366 in 2009.
The percentage of uninsured Colorado children also fell slightly [1], to 9.4 percent from 10.2 percent. But that remained significantly higher than the national average in 2011 of 7.5 percent uninsured, and the gap grew a bit. In 2009, the national average was 8.6 percent. Colorado’s ranking on a percentage basis was 42nd out of the states in 2011, slightly worse than the 38th ranking we received in 2009.
Nationwide, the center estimated 5.5 million uninsured children in 2011, compared to 6.4 million in 2009.
Some states are doing a better job taking advantage of existing state and federal programs for childhood health insurance, including Medicaid CHP. Massachusetts, with its state-mandated insurance program, has only 1.7 percent of its children uninsured. Near Colorado, Nebraska does the best at 5.9 percent of children uninsured.
The worst state in the nation by percentage was Nevada, at 16.2 percent of children without insurance in 2011.
Signing up more children and pushing a state’s percentage down usually requires a concerted marketing and community relations campaign, which Colorado has tried in various stages.