Children's Health Insurance

Marian Wright Edelman
President and Founder
Children’s Defense Fund

Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

We have all heard the saying, "As the twig is bent the tree inclines.''  This maxim is especially true for the minds and bodies of our children.  The physical and mental health of the child prepares the way for the physical and mental health of the adult.  Our future as a Nation lies in the healthy development of our children. That development must be fostered from the earliest stages so that our twigs and saplings will grow into straight and strong trees.

—Ronald Reagan

Among the 46.6 million people in the United States without health insurance coverage, more than nine million are children – one out of every nine children is uninsured.  Every 51 seconds another child is born uninsured.  Millions more children are underinsured. The majority of uninsured children live in two-parent households, and 87 percent live in families where at least one parent works.  Increasingly, families who are already working hard need help paying for health insurance for their children.  Children without health insurance live sicker and die sooner than children with health insurance. 

The United Health Foundation’s annual report is a much-needed benchmark of America’s health needs – where we are making progress and how far we still have to go.  It reminds us that many of those most in need in America are children—especially poor children and minority children.  Several years after national goals were set in Healthy People 2010, the continuing disparities in illness and death experienced by minorities and the poor, including their children, remain a major obstacle to improving our nation’s health.

Although there are more White than Black or Latino uninsured children, a Black infant in America is twice as likely as a White infant to die before its first birthday.  Because of the long lasting impact of childhood conditions, including many that disproportionately affect poor children and children of color, reducing health disparities among children is crucial to improving the well-being of all children and, by extension, the nation as a whole.

Timely access to preventive health care for all children is not only the right thing to do, but the smart and sensible thing to do.  It costs less to provide health insurance coverage to children than to any other group.  Every dollar spent vaccinating children against measles, mumps, and rubella saves $16 in medical costs to treat those illnesses. 

Health coverage improves children’s academic performance.  Reading scores and school attendance of uninsured children improve dramatically after they become insured.  Some studies have linked health insurance and good health in childhood to increased future earning potential.

It is long past time for all children in America to have a fair chance to survive and thrive in the richest nation on earth.  Health coverage for all of them must be the top priority of all of us.

The United States stands virtually alone in the industrialized world in not guaranteeing access to health care to all its children.  We spend a higher portion of our gross domestic product on health care than any other country but rank 26th among 30 industrialized nations in infant mortality, tied with Hungary and Poland.  Only Lithuania and Latvia have worse infant mortality rates among industrialized nations.  We can do better.

Americans over 65 have access to health coverage under the federal Medicare program regardless of income.  Although children can’t provide for themselves, they have no such guarantee, and their chance to survive, thrive, learn and be healthy depends on their lottery of birth.  This is unjust.

Medicare for senior citizens is run by the federal government, with one standard for eligibility and benefits for everyone across the country.  Because there is no coherent system of assured health coverage with uniform benefits for children, existing government funded health care programs for selected low income children are run by the states with different standards for eligibility, cost sharing, and benefits.  As a result, millions of eligible children are not enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP (State Children’s Health Insurance Program). 

A child has only one childhood.  It should be a healthy one.  It is time to enact comprehensive health insurance coverage for all children now.  For all of us, making sure we have a healthy America begins with taking responsibility for protecting the health and wellbeing of all our children.  What a positive goal for us to commit to and achieve together in 2007 as the State Children’s Health Insurance Program comes up for reauthorization.

For more information about how you can get involved in the struggle to ensure that all children get health insurance go to www.childrensdefense.org.