Health Insurance Coverage for Bay Area Kids: What the Data Show
July 24, 2007
Contact: Andy Krackov, Senior Director of Public Information, at (650) 736-0677 or andrew.krackov@lpfch.org.
Given the growing national debate about health insurance for children, the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health has prepared this county-by-county breakdown of how children in the Bay Area receive health care coverage. As shown in the table below, the Bay Area mirrors a California-wide decline in the number of children covered by employment-based insurance. Statewide survey results also show that enrollment has increased for the state's free Medi-Cal program and low-cost Healthy Families program.
The Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health makes these data available through its kidsdata.org Web site. The site offers more than 250 indicators about the health and well being of local children and focuses on providing Bay Area media, policymakers, health professionals and parents with the data they need. Kidsdata.org presently offers data for San Mateo and Santa Clara counties, along with statewide comparisons, and it will expand this fall to offer data for Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, and San Francisco counties.
What The Numbers Show
Following a trend that's evident across California, the percentage of children ages 0-17 covered by employment-based insurance has largely declined in the Bay Area while, of families surveyed, the percentage of children enrolled in the state's free Medi-Cal program or low-cost Healthy Families program has increased in recent years. In the Bay Area, anywhere from 14% of children (Marin County) to 29% of children (San Francisco County) were covered by the Medi-Cal/Healthy Families programs in 2005, according to the California Health Interview Survey (CHIS).
This CHIS survey shows that the percentage of uninsured children has declined statewide from 9.4% in 2001 to 6.4% in 2005. While CHIS survey numbers are too small to document uninsured rates for children at the county level, a 2006 poll of 1,800 Bay Area parents conducted by the Lucile Packard Foundation for Children's Health found that 5.1% of parents say they do not have insurance that pays for part or all of their child's medical care. That number was higher – 13.6% – for parents earning less than $50,000.
County-Sponsored Insurance Programs
In 2001, Santa Clara County pioneered a new insurance program called the Children's Health Initiative (CHI) to ensure medical coverage for all children in the county, including those who are undocumented. Numerous California counties – including Alameda, Marin, San Francisco, San Mateo and Santa Clara – either have established or are developing a CHI. These county programs work to bolster enrollment in Healthy Families and Medi-Cal and provide a new program, called Healthy Kids for those who are not eligible for other forms of public or job-based insurance. CHI has improved both access to and use of medical and dental care, according to evaluations conducted in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.