November 06, 2014
By Troy Wilde,
SALT LAKE CITY – Despite some gains, about one in 10 children in Utah do not have health insurance, according to a report from the Georgetown Center for Children and Families in Washington.
The report, “Children’s Coverage at a Crossroads: Progress Slows,” found that Utah’s uninsured rate for children of 10 percent dropped nearly two points over the past couple of years. The national rate is just over 7 percent.
Lincoln Nehring, senior health policy analyst at Voices for Utah Children, says there is some progress, but Utah continues to lag behind other states because it has not expanded Medicaid.
“We haven’t been generous to parents,” he maintains. “The evidence is very clear that children are much more likely to be covered if their parents have a coverage option.
“By not doing Medicaid expansion, that is really undermining our ability to reach out to all children.”
Nehring says the report shows that about 85,000 children in Utah don’t have health insurance.
He says Medicaid expansion or Gov. Gary Herbert’s proposed Healthy Utah Plan could help tens of thousands of them get insurance.
Joan Alker, executive director at Georgetown Center for Children and Families and the report’s author, says 2013 was the first year in recent history that the national uninsured rate for children did not significantly decline from the previous year.
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