Kentucky insures greater share of children : Jere Downs

Kentucky has provided health insurance for a greater share of its children than Indiana or the nation as a whole, the U.S. Census Bureau reported Tuesday.

Ninety-three percent of the children in Kentucky had health insurance, greater than Indiana's 82 percent and higher than the national average of 90 percent, the Census figures showed.

'The good news is it sounds like the state of Kentucky is showing some results as far as covering kids,' said Ron Crouch, a retired sociologist from the University of Louisville and an expert on the U.S. census.

Kentucky in recent years has sought to enroll more lower income children in government-sponsored Medicaid and the Kentucky Children's Health Insurance Program.

Also known as KCHIP, the program provides free or low cost health insurance to children whose families earn up to double the federal poverty guidelines.

For a family of four that would be $44,100 annually. Last November, Gov. Steve Beshear announced an initiative to enroll an estimated 67,000 eligible children statewide.

In Indiana, families are eligible to participate in its state-sponsored free or low cost health insurance for children if their income measures up to 250 percent of federal poverty level guidelines ' $55,125 for a family of four.

Indiana is seeking permission from the federal government to open its children's health insurance program, SCHIP, to more families by raising the threshold earnings to triple the poverty level.

As of March, Indiana estimated roughly 75,564 children statewide without health insurance were eligible to enroll in SCHIP, said Marcus Barlow, spokesman for the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration.

Answers to the new health care questions posed by the U.S. Census Bureau last year illustrate startling differences in health care coverage among states as Congress takes up overhauling health care.

The count provides an official measure of the uninsured amid a flurry of conflicting data from those involved in the debate about health care, said Charles Nelson, assistant chief for economic characteristics at the Census Bureau. The agency distributed questionnaires to 3 million U.S. households through the American Community Survey, an annual study to update the decennial census.

'There was definitely a need to shed some light on the subject,' Nelson said, adding health care insurance questions will remain and be expanded upon in future annual surveys

The figures also showed Louisville and its suburban counties have a greater percentage of adults under age 65 with health insurance than the rest of Kentucky, Indiana and the nation.

In the 13-county metro area, including nine Kentucky counties and four in Southern Indiana, about 87 percent of adults under age 65 had health insurance compared with 85 percent nationwide and 84 percent for all of Kentucky and all of Indiana.

Nationally, the rate of uninsured children varied from 2 percent in Massachusetts to 20 percent in Nevada.

The health care findings were among a swath of statistics released showing a population struggling with economic decline. The figures showed more people around the country are delaying marriage and home-buying, turning to carpools and staying put rather than moving to a new city.

'The recession has affected everybody in one way or another as families use lots of different strategies to cope with a new economic reality,' said Mark Mather, associate vice president of the nonprofit Population Reference Bureau. 'Job loss, or the potential for job loss, also leads to feelings of economic insecurity.'

In the Louisville region, health care advocates and policy makers have been waiting for the government's figures to weigh the scope and depth of the problem of insufficient health care coverage, said Bill Wagner, executive director of Family Health Centers.

Family Health Centers was established by the Jefferson County Board of Health in 1976 and operates clinics that provide health care to 43,000 area residents annually, regardless of ability to pay.

'People have been waiting for this census information to drill down and take a look at healthcare,' Wagner said Monday. 'As we establish goals, we would like to know if we are succeeding or have more work to do.'

The figures showing adults younger than 65 with health-insurance coverage varied widely.

While Kentucky and Indiana each showed about 84 percent of people younger than age 65 with health coverage in 2008, the figure was just three in four in Texas.

A large population of Hispanic residents in Texas and young adults aged 18 to 24, who often have less access to health care, can help account for those findings, Nelson said.

Massachusetts, in contrast, where recent health insurance reform requires all residents to have coverage, showed only 4 percent of people younger than 65 years old lacked coverage.