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Collateral Damage: Children Can Lose Coverage When Their Parents Lose Health Insurance |
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From Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: Although the state's policy changes were designed only to affect adults, the study finds that many children lost their health insurance coverage and suffered gaps in insurance coverage even though they were still eligible for benefits. Since the Food Stamp Program has a net income limit of 100 percent of the poverty line and OHP's income limit for children was 185 percent of the poverty line, virtually all children in the food stamp sample were eligible for OHP (which includes both Medicaid and SCHIP for children). Low-income children were 44 percent more likely to be uninsured at the time of the interview if an adult in the household had lost OHP coverage recently than if no adult had done so. Even though the eligibility criteria for children did not change and policymakers expected the policy change to affect only adults, the loss of parental health insurance coverage apparently caused some eligible children to become uninsured. If such restrictions are established and drive states to restrict eligibility for parents, some eligible children could lose their coverage and become uninsured. Two reviews are Leighton Ku and Matthew Broaddus, "Coverage of Parents Helps Children, Too," Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Oct. 20, 2006 or Sara Rosenbaum and Ramona Whittington, "Parental Health Insurance Coverage as Child Health Policy: Evidence from the Literature," George Washington Univ. Jennifer DeVoe, et al. "Uninsurance among Children Whose Parents Are Losing Medicaid Coverage: Results from a Statewide Survey of Oregon Families," to be published in Health Services Research.
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