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Florida still has a high rate of uninsured kids

The News Service of Florida

By Margie Menzel

October 28th, 2015

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – The number of uninsured children in the U.S. has dropped to a “historic low” under the federal Affordable Care Act — but Florida, while showing improvement, still has one of the highest rates of children without coverage.

A report released Wednesday by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute’s Center for Children and Families found that in 2014 — the first year for which numbers were available on the impact of the law known as Obamacare — 6 percent of U.S. children were uninsured, down from 7.1 percent in 2013.

In a conference call with reporters Wednesday, Joan Alker of the Georgetown Health Policy Institute said Obamacare had spread among families as some members gained coverage.

“Even states that didn’t expand Medicaid saw what we like to call a ‘welcome-mat effect’ from the ACA generally, that you get from covering the whole family,” Alker said. “But in our report we did find that states that expanded Medicaid saw a larger welcome-mat effect.”

Read more here.