The U.S. just reached an important milestone that will help more children grow to reach their full potential. Following the sharpest two-year decline in child uninsured rates on record, the U.S. made history with 95 percent of children covered by health insurance. The only age group with a better rate of health coverage are seniors who hover around 99 percent coverage rates thanks to the success of Medicare. The improvements for children were driven by the Affordable Care Act, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
For the past six years, my colleagues and I here at Georgetown University's Center for Children and Families have reported on state-by-state and national trends in children's health coverage. This year, we found that the nation's uninsured rate among children fell by a third (from 7.1 percent to 4.8 percent) from 2013 to 2015 as health reform's major coverage provisions took effect. That constitutes the largest two-year drop in the child uninsured rate on record, driven by continued enrollment growth in Medicaid and CHIP and further coverage gains achieved by health reform.
