Number of Uninsured Kids Drops in TX During COVID; Still 50th Nationwide
By: Roz Brown,
Producer,
Inside Climate News
Thursday, December 8, 2022
This article was originally Published by, Public News Service
It wasn’t huge, but Texas saw a decline in the number of uninsured children, falling from 12.7% in 2019 to 11.8% last year, according to research by Georgetown University.
The good news follows a decade when the state’s number of uninsured children was going up, but is likely because Congress allocated extra money nationwide during the pandemic to keep Medicaid recipients on the rolls. The temporary protections are scheduled to end next spring.
Anne Dunkelberg, senior fellow of health and food justice for the public policy group Every Texan, said three out of every four children who may lose Medicaid coverage will still be eligible, but re-enrollment can be cumbersome.
“In Texas, we have some really significant barriers to how easy or hard it is to update your address, something that simple,” Dunkelberg explained. “And all of those kinds of barriers, those are all things that are state choices.”
Despite the improvement, Texas has the worst uninsured rate and highest number of uninsured kids of any state. An estimated 930,000 in 2021 had no health coverage.
Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, worried as states unwind from the federal program, large numbers of children could lose health insurance.
“This continuous coverage protection is likely to expire early next year,” Alker noted. “We have estimated that the child uninsured rate is very possibly going to double when that happens, which is a very scary thought.”
Alker believes governors need to make a commitment they will not let any eligible children become uninsured when the national health emergency ends next spring.
At the same time, Dunkelberg is worried about the unwinding and re-enrollment process in Texas. She pointed out even when the state did not need to do renewals during the pandemic, offices could not keep up with paperwork, which is supposed to take 45 days.
“When we talk about Medicaid in Texas, we’re mostly talking about kids; our Medicaid program is three-quarters children,” Dunkelberg stressed. “And so, when we talk about the challenge our state faces, for catching up on the renewals of all these people who’ve been carried on the rolls, we’re mostly talking about children.”
Disclosure: The Georgetown University Center for Children and Families contributes to our fund for reporting on Children’s Issues, and Health Issues. If you would like to help support news in the public interest, click here.
References: Report Georgetown Univ. 12/07/2022
Insurance report Pew Trusts 02/19/2020
