More American children are uninsured despite strong economy

[DonViejo]

Source: CNN

By Tami Luhby, CNN

Updated 12:01 AM ET, Thu November 29, 2018

New York (CNN) - For the first time in nearly a decade, the number of uninsured children in America has grown.

The reversal is unprecedented, particularly given a strong economy in which more people are landing jobs and gaining access to employer health coverage. It also comes at a time when the nation's overall uninsured rate remained flat.

Roughly 276,000 more children were uninsured in 2017 than the year before, bringing the total to more than 3.9 million, according to a report released Thursday by Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families. Some 5% of those 18 and under had no health insurance, up from 4.7% a year earlier.

"With an improving economy and a very low unemployment rate, the fact that our nation is going backwards on children's health coverage is very troubling," said Joan Alker, the center's executive director. "Without serious efforts to get back on track, the decline in coverage is likely to continue in 2018 and may in fact get worse for America's children."

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2018/11/29/politics/uninsured-children-rate/index.html

[Roy Rolling]

1. An Important Step

The GOP and especially Trump think Third World status is three times better than those elite, first-world countries.

[ck4829]

2. Strong... sure

[CountAllVotes]

11. +1 !!

Pile of pure B.S. is it not?

Time to DUMP TRUMP!

[still_one]

3. Where are the figures for those who can't afford their premiums because they lost the ACA subsidies

due to these assholes?

I suspect there are other groups that also aren't included in these statistics who don't have health insurance.

but hey, they can take their excellent "tax breaks", and buy their catastrophic health insurance which doesn't cover sqwat

[BigmanPigman]

14. Hear, hear!

[LakeSuperiorView]

4. Has tRumpy Care even been outlined?

Is it better than a Chinese made stuffed animal with 39 star flag shoved up it's ass?

[MiniMe]

5. What happened to CHIP?

I thought that was supposed to fix Childrens health care?

[mastermind]

6. The economy isn't strong just because wall street is up

trickle down economics will never improve the peoples economy, its all smoke and mirrors. Nothing good will happen, only fattened swiss bank accounts.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

13. Trickle down implies the regular folks won't be getting much more

Here's a few extra pennies basically. It's not showering down or pouring down on us. The language implies we get the scraps, if anything.

[haele]

7. Cuts to CHIPs and SCHIPs funding.

"Oh, they had couple good years, so we'll just pull back their funding..."
- because a couple years where there was a "baby bust", sheer "good luck" when it came to injuries, there was no major pandemic with attendant health complications (i.e., encephalitis), or because more people had employer-provided family health care for a short time means that it's always going to be that way.

"Taxpayers shouldn't be covering/can't afford to cover the children of non-Americans..."
- because the administration just wants to be mean to "brown" families, no matter if the families are here legally, or if the children were native-born citizens or not.

"Medicaid can cover kids."
- even though Medicaid may or may not be expanded in that state because of sheer meanness, and many states have income or work restrictions to be able to participate, even for working families with a household income around the U.S. median.

"ACA can cover kids..."
- even though the promise of the ACA has been cut and neutered by the GOP for nearly a decade to be nearly unaffordable for anyone making just below the median wage without some serious subsidies because it's a "Democratic" program.

Haele

[sarcasmo]

8. Part time jobs don't offer insurance. CHIP was gutted by the GOP.

[Maxheader]

9. Hopefully the new liberal congress will put the halt to

stumpy, the yellow haired dogs attempts to destroy the aca...

What's behind the increase in the uninsured isn't clear, but Alker attributes it to the Trump administration and Congress' attempts to dismantle the Affordable Care Act and shrink Medicaid.

[lagomorph777]

10. Exactly according to GOP plan.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

12. It's a bullshit strong economy.

Regular working people with families aren't benefiting from it. The rich people are. People are working, but they don't have good benefits and many have difficulty paying for what they need still.

[area51]

15. Sociopath Trump

promised to cover everyone.

However, Medicare for All will.

[Takket]

16. GOP policies are functioning exactly how they want.