Summary
This fact sheet examines children's health insurance coverage, and children who are uninsured but eligible for coverage through public programs, using data from the 2003 California Health Interview Survey (CHIS 2003). It also describes how the profile has changed since 2001. CHIS 2003 provides the most recent information available on health insurance coverage of Californians, both statewide and at the county level. More than 1.1 million children under age 19 were uninsured for all or part of the year in 2003 -- a significant drop from the 1.5 million who had no insurance in 2001. Children's coverage through a parent's employment-based insurance dropped 4.3 percentage points from 2001, while children's Medi-Cal or Healthy Families coverage increased 5.2 percentage points. The authors conclude that Medi-Cal and Healthy Families were effective in covering children as employment-based coverage declined for both children and adults between 2001 and 2003. If children's Medi-Cal and Healthy Families enrollment had increased only as much as adult enrollment in these programs, an additional 487,000 children would have been uninsured in 2003. The effectiveness of these public programs in assuring that children are covered for health care expenses, combined with the availability of federal matching funds for Medi-Cal and Healthy Families expenditures, underscores their potential for offsetting at least some of the loss in job-based insurance.
The development and publication of this fact sheet were supported by grants from The California Wellness Foundation and The California Endowment.
