The Annie E. Casey Foundation has applauded efforts over recent decades to expand health coverage to more children and families. Through advancements in the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act, the numbers are trending in the right direction. In June, our 2017 KIDS COUNT Data Book reported that never in our nation’s history have so many children had health coverage: 95%.

Although the political parties seldom have been aligned at the same time, policymakers on both sides of the aisle have worked together over the past decades to bring us to this pinnacle.

Some of the progress:

  • In 2015, 3.5 million kids lacked health insurance. While that number is still too high, it represents a 38% improvement from 2010, or 2.4 million more children with coverage.
  • In 34 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, the percentage of children without health insurance was 5% or less.
  • California, home to one in eight children in the United States, experienced an almost 70% drop in the percentage of uninsured children between 2010 and 2015.

Read the source article at The Annie E. Casey Foundation