Parents With Health Insurance Often Can’t Aford Coverage For Kids
October 21st, 2008 | by admin |
A new study finds that in more cases than not, children living in America are living without health insurance but their parents are not.
This is the case due to middle income and low income families not having enough money to insure their entire families, due to the cost of private insurance being too high.
The study, which looked at data pertaining to children living with at least 1 parent, found that as many as 1 quarter of uninsured children have a parent who is insured, and in the majority of cases, that parent was enrolled in a private plan.
In total, the number of uninsured children living in America is dropping, down .6 million from 2006.
“The working adults in these families may be able to afford private insurance for themselves but cannot afford to pay the premiums to cover the entire family,” said the researchers, led by Jennifer DeVoe of the Oregon Health and Science University, in Portland, in their report. “In this study, the private system did not do a good job of providing coverage for entire families.”
To help insure that all children are covered under some form of health insurance, states are imposing rules making it manditory for all residents to be covered.
The study is published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
