July 16, 2015
By Michelle Hughes and Joan Alker,
Healthy children come from healthy families. That’s why providing health insurance for parents has numerous benefits for children and, conversely, leaving those parents uninsured puts children at risk. A report released this week by the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families shows that using federal Medicaid dollars earmarked for North Carolina to close the state’s coverage gap would provide health insurance coverage for over 125,000 parents, laying the foundation for better life and health outcomes for our state’s children.
North Carolina and 21 other states have not taken advantage of generous federal dollars available under the Affordable Care Act to cover working poor adults. This funding requires no state match until 2016, after which North Carolina will never pay more than 10 percent of the cost to provide coverage.
Most North Carolinians who would be eligible for a plan using new Medicaid funding are working but cannot afford to buy health insurance on prevailing wages in industries such as retail, construction or food service. (For example, adults who earn between $737 a month and $1,674 a month for a family of three are in this coverage gap and are currently ineligible for either Medicaid or the premium tax credit under the Affordable Care Act.)
More than a fourth of the adults who would be eligible for a new Medicaid plan are parents with children at home. Of these parents, the majority are white (55 percent) and are working outside of the home (64 percent). Because those parents are uninsured, their children are less likely to be insured and are subject to ongoing economic and health risks associated with their parents’ uninsured status.
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