Positive news out of Florida for a change. Our state (East Coast Health Insurance makes its home in Deerfield Beach, Florida), leads the nation in lowering the rate of uninsured children, according to a study released Tuesday. (The downside is that adults continue to sacrifice coverage. Florida also is near the top for uninsured adults).
As of 2010, 12.7% of Florida children are uninsured which is a significant drop from the 16.7% it was in 2008. The current total of uninsured children in Florida is 506,934, says the report by researchers at the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families.
Actually over this period, the news was good in 34 states, as they all had success in reducing the rate of uninsured children. Nevada however, perhaps not surprisingly has the highest rate of uninsured kids at 17.4%. The best state? The one with Governor Romney’s public health plan in Massachusetts which is only 1.5%. Seemingly, the Massachusetts public plan has fared significantly better than the wild west system in most of the rest of the world. Texas leads the nation in number of uninsured kids with nearly 1 million although it was able to lower its uninsured rate to 14.5 percent from 17 percent.
The national rate for the uninsured
Nationally, the uninsured rate for children fell from 9 percent to 8 percent from 2008 to 2010, as the number of uninsured children fell by 960,000, the study said.
The drop is probably coming from the new health care reform law and of course the community, state, and federal grants that are being advertized on billboards and television. However, in Florida most of the expansion is credited to the economy which is literally causing new Medicaid enrollment qualifiers daily. In other words, someone loses a job or takes a job that leaves them below the poverty line.
CHIP which is a government program that helps families that don’t qualify for Medicaid get their children health insurance also has lowered it barriers to entrance for families. In Florida that program is known Florida Kid Care. For instance, just recently the state lowered the penalty for failure to pay CHIP premiums from 6 months loss of eligibility to 60 days.
