Wisconsin dropped eight places in rankings and is struggling to insure children in rural areas 

A new report by a Georgetown University research center found that Wisconsin is no longer the leader that it once was in reducing the uninsured rate for children. The good news is that the percentage of Wisconsin kids with insurance still places us in the top third of all states – ranking 14^th, but we’ve slipped eight places from a ranking of 6^th best in 2008.

The new report from the Georgetown Center for Children and Families examined all 50 states and found:

• Approximately 61,000 kids in Wisconsin, or 4.7% of the state’s children, were uninsured in 2013.
• The Wisconsin figures have remained stagnant since 2008, despite the national uninsured rate for children dropping by 24% in the same time period.
• Rural areas have a disproportionate share of Wisconsin’s uninsured children; those areas account for 30% of all kids in the state but 42% of the children who are uninsured.

I fear that once the Census Bureau data for 2014 is available, Wisconsin will drop further towards being an average state for children’s coverage. It’s too soon to make predictions with much confidence, but my best guess is that Wisconsin will slip some more because the number of kids participating in BadgerCare and Transitional Medicaid has been declining – dropping by nearly 11,000 over the past 12 months. The decrease appears to be an indirect effect of ending BadgerCare eligibility for approximately 60,000 parents.

Wisconsin’s leadership on providing health care insurance for children began back in the 1980s and 1990s when state lawmakers gradually expanded the Healthy Start program, which grew into BadgerCare.  One of the key changes came in 1999 when BadgerCare extended eligibility to parents up to 200% of the federal poverty level (FPL).  That change, which was championed by Governor Thompson, significantly improved enrollment among children who had already been eligible.

Another significant improvement for coverage of kids came in 2008, when Wisconsin lawmakers initiated BadgerCare Plus.  But from 2009 to 2013 our state has been moving sideways on children’s coverage, as other states continued to make progress and some of them have moved ahead of us in the percentage of kids who have health insurance.  For example, in Massachusetts, which pioneered health care reform, only 1.5% of children were uninsured in 2013.

Wisconsin can and should do better for our kids. As Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, said:

“Research shows that when children have health insurance, they enjoy better health throughout childhood and do better in school.  Improving children’s health today is a smart investment in the future.”

We can resume making progress in insuring Wisconsin children by doing the following:

• DHS should cut red tape and make it easier for families to sign up their children for insurance and keep them signed up.
• State lawmakers should restore eligibility to parents whose low-wage work puts them a little above the poverty level, because covering low-income parents is a key strategy for getting more children enrolled.
• Congress needs to renew funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which has very successfully reduced the number of uninsured children nationally and enabled Wisconsin to cover far more children.

Making quality, affordable health insurance available for all children has long been an area of bipartisan agreement in Wisconsin and elsewhere, and we are optimistic that that will continue to be the case.  Let’s hope so, because it will take the hard work of lawmakers in both parties to reauthorize CHIP funding and to achieve Governor Walker’s goal of cutting in half the number of uninsured Wisconsinites.

You  can read more in the new Georgetown report – Children’s Coverage at A Crossroads: Progress Slows – and in this WCCF press release.

Jon Peacock