Children without health insurance on rise in Volusia, Flagler and Florida
"They were on the
Under Florida KidCare, children are assigned into one of a number of health-care programs based on their ages and income levels. Some of those programs require monthly premiums and co-payments.
Adding the children to her insurance plan at work would cost Marty close to
In
"With an improving economy and low unemployment rate, the fact our nation is going backwards on children's health coverage is very troubling," said
Alker attributed the increase in uninsured children to a variety of factors, including uncertainty about the federal Affordable Care Act (ACA) and slashing public funding for "navigators" who help people obtain health coverage. Another potential factor is a rule proposed by the administration of President
Alker said the best thing a state can do to address the increases in uninsured children is to expand Medicaid.
For
"We looked into putting her on both mine and my wife's employers,
For children without insurance, there is a glimmer of hope in the distance.
The state
"Through a proposed legislative budget request, we hope to reduce the cost of our full-pay program and offer
York said if the price dropped that much she could enroll her children in the program.
"Right now we have to pick and choose whose medical issues are more urgent to take care of at the moment," York said. "I don't have insurance either and I have medical issues that need to be addressed every couple of months. Having that plan would help a lot."
But state
"To say 'I'm troubled by it, I'll dump a whole bunch more money in it,' is to say, 'The next presiding officers will then have to come back and try to figure it out because the prices will continue to rise,' " Oliva told The News Service of
"I don't think there's any political debate that having health coverage for kids is a good thing," Swerlick said, adding that
In 2008, the percentage of children in
"There's been a lot of hard work out in the community, so now that the trend line is creeping back up, I think we really need to take a hard look at why that's happening and have a strategy and action to push back on that," Swerlick said.
Medicaid continues to be the primary source of health coverage for the children who are insured in
The largest jump was in the percentage of uninsured white children. In 2016, 6.4 percent of white children were uninsured. That figure jumped to 7.2 percent in 2017. Moreover, it was children living in families who earned between 200 percent and 299 percent of the federal poverty level (or between
The study used data from the 2017
News Service of
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