The number of uninsured children has seen a striking drop since the Affordable Care Act was implemented.
The Anne E. Casey Foundation – a top children’s welfare group – urged federal and state lawmakers to maintain kids health insurance under the ACA. They sought continued investments into programs aimed at the amelioration of children’s health.
Since Obamacare first passed, there number of uninsured kids in the United States fell like a stone.
From 2010 through 2015 there was a massive spike in the number of children covered by kids health insurance. In 2010, there were approximately 8 percent of American kids without coverage. That represented about 5.9 million children across the country. Those stats were published within the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s newly created Kids Count data book.
That said, only five years later, upon the complete implementation of the Affordable Care Act, the number of uninsured children fell by over 37 percent across the country.
In 2015, only about 5 percent of children lacked kids health insurance, meaning 3.5 million were uninsured.
“Of the child health trends tracked by Kids Count, the most remarkable is the tremendous increase in health insurance coverage; 95 percent of American children now have health insurance,” said the Annie E. Casey Foundation report. “The drop in the number of uninsured children is largely attributed to expanded public health coverage.”
California, the state with the highest child population, was also the state that experience the greatest improvement in the uninsured rate. One of every 8 kids in the United States resides in California. From 2010 to 2015 in that state, there was a 67 percent drop in the number of kids without a health plan.
Other states that saw considerable gains in the number of kids with health insurance coverage included: New York, Colorado, Oregon, New Mexico, Nevada, Minnesota and South Carolina. Those states all experienced a reduction of at least 50 percent in the number of children without kids health insurance. The report was published as a part of a broad effort in the United States to halt the current efforts to replace certain central components of the Affordable Care Act.
