Number Of U.S. Kids Who Don't Have Health Insurance Is On The Rise
The number of children in the United States without health insurance jumped to 3.9 million in 2017 from about 3.6 million the year before, according to census data.
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After years of steady decline, the number of U.S. children without health insurance rose by 276,000 in 2017, according to a Georgetown University report released Thursday.
While not a big jump statistically — the share of uninsured kids rose to 5 percent in 2017 from 4.7 percent a year earlier — it is still striking. The uninsured rate typically remains stable or drops during times of economic growth. In September, the U.S. unemployment rate hit its lowest level since 1969.
“The nation is going backwards on insuring kids and it is likely to get worse,” says Joan Alker, co-author of the study and executive director of Georgetown’s Center for Children and Families.
Alker and other advocates for children’s health place the blame for this change on the Trump administration and the Republican-controlled Congress, saying the Republican policies and actions have cast a pall on enrollment in health plans.
The number of children in the United States without coverage rose to 3.9 million in 2017 from about 3.6 million a year earlier, according to census data analyzed by Alker’s Georgetown team.
The overall uninsured rate for people of all ages — which plummeted from 2013 to 2016 following the health law’s implementation — remained unchanged at 8.8 percent last year.
The share of children with employer-sponsored health coverage rose modestly in 2017, Alker says, but not by enough to make up for the drop in children enrolling in Medicaid or getting coverage from Obamacare insurance exchanges.
While no states made significant strides in reducing the percentage of children who are uninsured, nine states saw their numbers go the wrong way. The largest negative changes occurred in South Dakota (where the rate of uninsured kids rose from 4.7 percent to 6.2 percent), Utah (up from 6 percent to 7.3 percent) and Texas (from 9.8 percent to 10.7 percent).
More than 1 in 5 uninsured children nationwide live in Texas — about 835,000 kids — by far the highest number of any state.
Florida had 325,000 uninsured kids last year, as its uninsured rate for that age group rose 0.7 percentage points to 7.3 percent. California had 301,000 children without insurance — its number remained virtually unchanged, relative to the previous year.
Other states with significant increases were Georgia, South Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee and Massachusetts.
The uninsured rates for children increased at nearly triple the rates in states that did not expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, according to the report. Studies have shown that children whose parents are insured are more likely to have health coverage.
Georgetown has been tracking these figures since 2008, when 7.6 million children — or about 10 percent of kids — lacked health coverage.
Because nearly all low-income children are eligible for Medicaid or the federal Children’s Health Insurance Program, the challenge is making sure parents are aware of the programs, Alker says, and getting the kids enrolled and keeping them signed up as long as they are eligible.
Congress let the CHIP program funding lapse for several months in 2017, putting states in a position of having to warn families that enrollment would soon be frozen. Congress restored federal funding in early in 2018.
In addition, low-income families were bombarded by news reports last year that Congress was threatening to repeal the health law that expanded coverage to millions. And, in the past two years, the Trump administration has slashed funding for Obamacare navigators who help people sign up for coverage.
Alker points to the Trump administration’s September proposal, known as the “public charge” rule as another factor that may have led to fewer children getting health insurance. The rule could make it harder for legal immigrants to get green cards if they have received certain kinds of public assistance — including Medicaid, food stamps and housing subsidies. Green cards allow these legal migrants to live and work permanently in the United States.
OLE Health, a large health provider based in Napa Valley, Calif., that serves many immigrants, says it has seen patients leave the Medicaid rolls in the past year. CEO Alicia Hardy says many have dropped coverage over fears the help could jeopardize their immigration status.
“They are afraid of being deported,” she says.
All those events may have deterred families from getting their kids covered.
“The welcome mat has been pulled back,” Alker says, “and as a result we see more uninsured children.”
She says the easiest way to change the trend would be for more states to expand Medicaid under the health law. Fourteen states have yet to do so. Though the expansion largely affects adults, as parents enroll, their children are likely to follow.
Kaiser Health News, a nonprofit news service, is an editorially independent program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, and not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente. KHN’s coverage of children’s health care issues is supported in part by a grant from the Heising-Simons Foundation.
Today in Movie Culture: 'Venom' is a Rom-Com, 'Anna and the Apocalypse' Flashmob and More
Here are a bunch of little bites to satisfy your hunger for movie culture:
Reworked Movie of the Day:
This is not a fan edit. Sony themselves cut a new trailer to make Venom appear to be a romantic comedy:
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Movie Promotion of the Day:
Speaking of cool marketing ideas, here’s a flashmob musical performance promoting Anna and the Apocalypse in Austin:
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Movie Trivia of the Day:
With the holiday season upon us and in honor of its 15th anniversary, CineFix shares a bunch of obscure trivia about Elf:
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Actor in the Spotlight:
For GQ, Ben Mendelsohn discusses his most iconic characters, including those from The Dark Knight Rises and Rogue One: A Star Wars Story:
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Vintage Image of the Day:
Alfonso Cuaron, who turns 57 today, directs Daniel Radcliffe on the set of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban in 2003:
Filmmaker in Focus:
For Fandor, Shaina Hodgkinson and Jacob T. Swinney highlight the directorial trademarks of Kathryn Bigelow:
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Filmmaking Lesson of the Day:
For Vanity Fair, Martin Scorsese’s regular script supervisor, Martha Pinson, shows the importance of her job:
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Mashup of the Day:
Dimitri Bitu cut together parts from The Lion King and The Lion King 1½ to extend an iconic scene:
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Cosplay of the Day:
There is not enough Muppets cosplay, but this Swedish Chef totally makes up for the general lack:
I kept the cosplay a secret from almost all the cosplayer friends I know. During the con, I’d walk up & ask “Hurm durdoo de ‘clicky-clicky’?” while shaking my phone at them and making camera gestures. I’d thank them by name in my normal voice!
READ REST https://t.co/RiaRiOoGAP pic.twitter.com/VoFqjaID53
— ejen @ Ikkicon (@cosplayamerica) November 28, 2018
Classic Movie Trailer of the Day:
This week is the 15th anniversary of the release of Shattered Glass. Watch the original trailer for the modern classic below.
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Why There's So Much Beef Being Sent Between The U.S. And Mexico
Mexico and the U.S. send cattle back and forth, so much so, that a head can cross the border multiple times before reaching its final destination.
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
Last year, the U.S. exported roughly 500 million pounds of beef to Mexico. At the same time, the U.S. imported – wait for it – roughly 500 million pounds of beef from Mexico. And despite the U.S. having a huge national herd, it imports almost a million head of live cattle each year from Mexico. So what’s with all the cattle traffic? NPR’s Jason Beaubien from our Planet Money podcast team went down to the border to find out.
JASON BEAUBIEN, BYLINE: Just west of El Paso, Texas, in a dusty, arid stretch of the New Mexico desert, there are two huge stockyards, one in Mexico and one in the U.S. The rusty border fence slices through the middle of them. Each weekday, 3,000 to 4,000 Mexican cattle pass through here.
WILLIAM WALLACE: This is considered the biggest import-export facility for livestock in North America.
BEAUBIEN: This is William Wallace. He’s a fourth-generation cattle rancher, and he’s with the group the Chihuahua Cattlemen’s Association. They own both the American and the Mexican stockyards here.
WALLACE: What we’re seeing right now, you have pens from the east and the west.
BEAUBIEN: The cattle pens push right up against the border fence.
WALLACE: On the east side would be all the cattle coming in from the state of Chihuahua.
BEAUBIEN: Nearly 500,000 cattle each year pass through this one gate, this one big, rusty, sliding gate under the watchful eye of a Customs and Border Protection agent. These calves that were born in Mexico get sent to farms and feedlots in America where it’s cheaper to fatten them up on American corn and alfalfa until they’re are about 1,300 or 1,400 pounds and ready for slaughter. After that, many parts of them may very well get sent back south of the border again to Mexico, particularly parts like head, stomachs and tails, which have a much higher value south of the border.
ERIKA DE LA O-MEDINA: Oh, this is the best part. Try this.
BEAUBIEN: I’m having lunch with Erika de la O at the El Chaparral restaurant in Juarez. She’s telling me about her favorite Mexican delicacies.
DE LA O-MEDINA: The head of the cow – you put it to boil, and you get the cheeks for barbacoa. You get the eyeballs for special gourmet tacos.
BEAUBIEN: She works with the New Mexico Border Authority as a kind of trade representative. She grew up in Chihuahua. She’s married to a rancher, and she knows where to find good fried tripe in Juarez. She says, in Mexico, nothing gets wasted.
DE LA O-MEDINA: The cow is utilized 100 percent. You get the tongue. There’s also a dish with the oxtail.
BEAUBIEN: All of these delicacies that she’s raving about, in the U.S., these are all classified by the government as beef byproducts. Here, they’re what’s for dinner. Derrell Peel, an agricultural economist at Oklahoma State University, says this is the answer to that question of why millions of pounds of beef would be flowing back and forth in both directions across the U.S.-Mexico border.
DERRELL PEEL: The thing to keep in mind is that beef is not one thing.
BEAUBIEN: Peel says a single beef carcass gets divided up into hundreds of different products, ranging from liver to hamburger to tenderloin. The hide gets sold for leather. The fat gets used in making soap. And Peel says the value of all these various parts of the carcass is different in different markets.
PEEL: There’s no reason to assume in any country that consumer preferences are going to exactly match the mix of products that you’re going to get every time you process one of these animals.
BEAUBIEN: For instance, in the U.S., beef round is a relatively low-value cut used in pot roast. It’s often cut into thin steaks for a dish called milanesa in Mexico.
PEEL: So you add value when you ship that there.
BEAUBIEN: At first, this cross-border beef shuffle seems absurd, but the ranchers on both sides of the border say it’s making more money for them and making beef cheaper for everyone. And several of them mentioned that in a time of escalating tensions around the border and trade, they hope it stays that way. Jason Beaubien, NPR News.
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Magnus Carlsen Retains His Title As World Chess Champion
Defending world champion Magnus Carlsen, who is Norwegian, decisively beat his opponent, American Fabiano Caruana, at the World Chess Championship on Wednesday in London.
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It came down to a series of rapid tie-break games, but defending world chess champion Magnus Carlsen has emerged victorious once again.
Carlsen, a 27-year-old Norwegian, has held the title since 2013. He defeated Fabiano Caruana, who would have been the first U.S. citizen to win the world title since Bobby Fischer in 1972.
The two appeared evenly matched in the 12 games they played over three weeks before Wednesday’s climax. Each of those 12 games resulted in a draw, making it the first time in the tournament’s history that no player won a game during regular play.
But Carlsen dominated the board at Wednesday’s matches in London, decisively winning three games in a row to clinch the title.
“After a generally close-fought 12 games of classical, today just felt like slaughter,” commented grandmaster Peter Svidler in a chess24 livestream of the match.
“This was a hard fought match to the end, and I want to congratulate Magnus on defending his title,” said Caruana. “I was up against one of the most talented players in the history of chess, and I gave it everything I had.”
The previous 12 games had been much slower-paced – they could take more than five hours to complete. In the tie-break rounds, the pace sped up a lot.
Carlsen won the best of four tie-break series in three straight games. These started with 25 minutes on each player’s clock, and 10 additional seconds after each move.
If the pair had been tied after those four games, it would have proceeded to additional rounds of even faster games.
Here’s an animation of the final game from FiveThirtyEight’s Oliver Roeder (Carlsen played white):
here’s the final nail. #CarlsenCaruana pic.twitter.com/M10dhgMSQT
— Oliver Roeder (@ollie) November 28, 2018
Carlsen was seen to have an advantage in the tie-break games because he is higher ranked than Caruana at faster play.
But on Monday, he made a decision that caused some chess experts to question whether he was losing his fighting spirit. Even though he was in a more favorable position in game 12, he suddenly offered Caruana a draw, which he accepted.
“In light of this shocking draw offer from Magnus in a superior position with more time, I reconsider my evaluation of him being the favorite in rapids,” legendary chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov wrote on Twitter. “Tiebreaks require tremendous nerves and he seems to be losing his.”
It appears that Carlsen kept a grip on his nerves for Wednesday’s games.
The Guardian quotes grandmaster Judit Polgár from the commentary booth: “What a match. What a player. What a drama.”
