For the first time since 2008, the number of uninsured children in the U.S. increased in 2017, according to a new report from the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute.
While the total increase in the number of uninsured children is small – just 276,000 – 2017 marked the first time in nearly a decade that the number of uninsured children has risen. For the year, 3.9 million were uninsured, up from 3.6 million in 2016.
Passage of the Affordable Care Act and extension of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) have contributed to declines in the number of uninsured children.
In 2017, however, the number of uninsured children rose even as the overall uninsured rate in the U.S. remained the same: 8.8 percent. States with the biggest increases in the number of uninsured children were South Dakota, Utah, and Texas. More than 20 percent of all uninsured children in the U.S. live in Texas.
Learn more about the increase in the number of uninsured children and why these numbers have risen in the report Nation’s Progress on Children’s Health Coverage Reverses Course, which can be found here, on the web site of the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute.