The Los Angeles Times

By: Michael Hiltzik

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: In the ridiculous mess that is the American healthcare system, there’s one indisputable success — children’s health coverage. Over the last two decades, the uninsured rate for children under 18 has fallen from 14% to less than 5%.

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Today that achievement is under threat as never before. “We’re at real risk of moving backward,” says Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University. That’s because children’s healthcare in the U.S. is heavily dependent on three public programs, Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP.“All three legs of that stool,” Alker says, “are uncertain or threatened.”

Even if CHIP wins timely reauthorization, it’s the attack on Medicaid that really threatens children’s health, Alker points out. While CHIP covers nearly 9 million kids, Medicaid covers 37 million.

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