Utah has high rate of uninsured children

One in eight children in Utah is uninsured — nearly 13 percent of all children in the state — according to a report released Wednesday by a national health-care consumers policy research and advocacy group.

That's 107,000 children in Utah, making the state 10th nationally in the percentage of children who have no health-care coverage.

Nearly 91 percent of those children are in families with at least one parent employed at least part time; nearly 79 percent live in households with at least one family member works full time, year-round, the Families USA report shows.

About half come from low-income families — families with incomes lower than twice the federal poverty level of $35,200 for a family of three — eligible for Medicaid or Children's Health Insurance Program, the joint state and federally funded health insurance safety nets.

In 2007, more than 44,700 children in Utah received their health coverage through CHIP. Nationwide, about 4 million more children would have been provided coverage under a reauthorization bill that Congress approved but President George W. Bush ultimately vetoed.

"The children's health legislation vetoed by the president would have provided much needed relief to uninsured children in Utah and across the nation," said Ron Pollack, Families USA executive director. "Unfortunately, the minority of congressional members who voted with the president made it impossible to override the veto."

Such a measure may be part of the next economic stimulus package debated in Congress, thereby enabling states to retain and expand health coverage as more families become uninsured, he said. "The provision of increased federal matching funds to the states for Medicaid is of growing importance. States need to expand health coverage at a time when their budgets are increasingly precarious, so increased federal help is essential."

Now faced with an economy in crisis, Congress will likely consider providing higher federal matching funds to states for the Medicaid program. In Utah, where half of Medicaid enrollees are children, enrollment in the insurance plan has increased 9 percent since January.

With more demand on one hand and with less-than-estimated revenues, the Legislature cut $33 million from Medicaid, eliminating critical adult services it had reinstated in March such as physical therapy, occupational therapy and eyeglasses.

Utah Medicaid is facing a $20 million shortfall due to higher demand for the program. Since the beginning of the year, Utah Medicaid has added 13,000 Utahns to its rolls — 3,000 in just the past month, said Lincoln Nehring, Medicaid policy director at the Utah Health Policy Project.