The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has cut the nation's uninsured rate for nearly every demographic. But the law's impact has one exception: kids.
The uninsured rate for residents under 18 has remained relatively steady at about 7 percent during the first six months of 2014, according to the new Urban Institute Health Reform Monitoring Survey. Researchers say the report is the first measure of PPACA's effects on children's coverage.
Though the children's uninsured rate is low — comparatively, Gallup numbers put the average uninsured rate for adults at 13.4 percent — it still hasn't budged since PPACA implementation. Meanwhile, the Urban Institute said the uninsured rate for adults dropped 4 points over the past year.
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The reason, in part, is because PPACA's main provisions are targeted toward adults.
"The major ACA coverage provisions, including the state option to expand Medicaid to nearly all adults with family incomes at or below 138 percent of FPL4 and the provision of federal subsidies to purchase coverage in the new health insurance Marketplaces, were primarily designed to reduce uninsurance among adults," researchers wrote in the report.
They also say states refusing Medicaid expansion aren't helping, as those states, such as Texas and Florida, also have the highest rates of uninsured children. Report authors point to previous research that shows expanding public health insurance to parents makes it more likely their kids will get insured.
They also said that eligibility for subsidies under the law has had a small effect on children (only 6 percent of enrollees in exchange plans are under 18).
But they concluded that the children's uninsured rate could decrease in the future.
Researchers said that more uninsured kids might find coverage under PPACA, noting that about 55 percent of U.S. children who are uninsured are eligible for either Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program.
And more children may be covered as more states expand Medicaid.
For the analysis, researchers compared the uninsured rate for children (from birth to age 17) through June 2014 to rates estimated in previous quarters with data collected beginning in June 2013.
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