A new California HealthCare Foundation report reveals that the rate of increase of children's health coverage has slowed considerably in the wake of the national economic crisis and state funding cuts of recent years.
Children's Health Coverage Facts and Figures notes that California markedly increased children's health coverage between 2003 and 2007, reducing the number of uninsured children by 12 percent.
The authors attribute the improvements in those years to expansions in the Medi-Cal, Healthy Families, Healthy Kids and California Kids programs, as well as to eligibility and enrollment outreach efforts.
However, California now has a higher proportion of uninsured children enrolled in public programs (32 percent) than the national average (31 percent), but proportionally less in employer-based plans.
Slightly more than 12 percent of California children are uninsured, higher than the national average of 11.3 percent. That high rate exists despite the fact that in 2007 nearly 80 percent of uninsured children were eligible for public coverage, the report notes.
As employers drop dependent coverage, more California children are being pushed into public programs, although funding cuts and long waiting lists are slowing enrollment.
The Medi-Cal and Healthy Families programs cover about one-quarter to one-third of California children in all age groups, the report notes.
Enrollment in Medi-Cal, Healthy Families and Healthy Kids declined in 2008, although the report's authors claim that policy proposals and innovations aimed at increasing coverage could, if implemented, boost the number of covered.