WP: Number of Uninsured Children Rises; 8.3M Lacked Health Coverage in '05

[DeepModem Mom]

Number of Uninsured Children Rises
Census Figures Show 8.3 Million Youths Lacked Health Coverage in 2005
By Christopher Lee
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 5, 2006; Page A06

For the better part of a decade, fewer and fewer American children have gone without health insurance each year, a trend that diverged sharply from the seemingly inexorable rise in the number of adults without coverage.

No more.

For the first time since 1998, the number of children younger than 18 without health coverage ticked upward last year by 361,000, along with the overall increase in the ranks of the uninsured, according to census figures released last week. Of the nation's nearly 74 million children, about 8.3 million, or 11.2 percent, lacked coverage in 2005, up from 10.8 percent the year before.

The discouraging development surprised some health experts, who attributed the change to budget crunches that led some states to curtail enrollment of children in government-subsidized plans and steady declines in the number of people who receive health insurance through their jobs.

Children without health coverage are three times as likely as insured children to lack a regular doctor, according to a report released last month by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Research from the American College of Physicians in 2000 found that uninsured children were less likely to be up to date on immunizations and to receive treatment for sore throats, earaches and other common childhood illnesses. A University of Texas study found that kids with insurance tend to have fewer school absences....

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/04/AR2006090400958.html

[LynnTheDem]

1. Wow...which 3rd world nation is the article talking about???

We better invade that nation, overthrow the evil fascist dictator that's letting his own nation's children suffer! What kind of sick evil government allows this shit to happen???!!

And I bet it's some little tinpot nation that whines and screeches about places like Cuba...

[ninkasi]

2. Would any conservative like to address this?

After all, they are the ones who tout their values, and their absolute resolve that every embryo be brought to term, and be born. After the birth, sadly, they disappear, and in an about-face, penalize the mother for having her child. It's ok with them to picket women's health care clinics, and screech their mantra of every fertilized egg having the absolute right to be born.

Once the child is born, however, their tone changes. The poor, innocent babies are now born, and doomed, like their mothers, to the scorn of the conservative voters. They want to gut every safety net, every program, designed to help the poor. By passing through the birth canal, these babies have been transformed from innocent babies, to children of the poor, and shrinking middle classes.

The same sanctimonious conservatives who picket Planned Parenthood offices are the same ones who wish to hold 15 year old mothers to the same level of responsibility as well-off women in their late 20s, and early thirties. They may be teen-aged mothers, but they are not stupid, and see which party is discarding them like so much trash. In the mind of conservatives, we are all trash, if we have not had to stomach to claw our way to the top, and to hell with the ones we destroy to get there.

[PinkyisBlue]

3. This is so sad.

Take away health care, living wages, good public schools, college affordability, etc., and the only option left to these kids (when old enough) is a "career" in the military. As long as there's no draft, the families with money won't be upset; after all, these kids volunteered to enter the military, right?

The Republican plan is right on target. There will be plenty of cannon fodder for future invasions.

[liberal N proud]

4. Kenny Blackwell has a plan to fix that in Ohio

He will pass legislation requiring everyone in the state to purchase insurance. If they can afford it or not.
Yes that is Kenny Blackwells plan if he should steal the election from Ted Strickland and become Governor.

[rodeodance]

5. Isn't that Gov. Rommey's bill in Mass also? --they are Required to have

health insurance.

[ProudDad]

15. Yep

It's another fuck*ng welfare for the insurance companies "plan"...

[raccoon]

8. Sounds pretty effing stupid to me.

"If they can afford it or not."

And if they can't, what are they supposed to do?

If their premium is in the stratosphere because of their age and/or existing health conditions, what are they supposed to do?

If they can't get coverage at all because of existing health conditions, what are they supposed to do?

[Vinca]

6. We need to emulate the Canadians.

I just read a little blurb about a kid's fight with aplastic anemia. He lives on Grand Manan island in New Brunswick. If he had lived in this country, he'd be dead. Here's part of the article from the St. Croix Courier.

http://www.stcroixcourier.com/


GRAND MANAN – Today is a very special one for ten-year-old Chandler O’Neill, who returned home to the island after being away for a year undergoing medical treatment following a diagnosis of severe aplastic anemia.
There were balloons and welcome home signs for him as he waited to board the 9:30 a.m. ferry to Grand Manan with his mother, Natania O’Neill, as well as on board the vessel itself and there was a big welcome for him when he arrived on the island he has missed so much.
When Chandler was asked by the Children’s Wish Foundation what he would like, he said he just wanted to go home. He said he’s looking forward to seeing the cats again, although they won’t be allowed to sleep on his bed yet, and catching up with his friends.
His grandmother, Cathy O’Neill, said it was last year when they noticed that Chandler was bruising and then he started having nosebleeds. Since she and her husband, Philip, were headed to Saint John for a doctor’s appointment they took him along with them to see the doctor as well.
“She (the doctor) ordered blood work and she told us he was very, very sick and not to leave the city,” she said recalling what happened.
From there she said they took him to the eye doctor and they received further scary news - Chandler had a large bleed behind his eye. Mrs. O’Neill said she told the eye doctor they were waiting for a call from the doctor her grandson had seen earlier that day, then the phone rang.
“The doctor told us to take him to Saint John Regional Hospital immediately as he could bleed out any time and said a doctor would be waiting. When we got there a doctor was waiting for us and had made arrangements to send Chandler to the IWK.”
She said she called Chandler’s parents, Duane and Natania O’Neill, and they took the ferry from the island as the doctors wanted him out of the city by the next morning.
When they got to the IWK there was a doctor waiting and Chandler was in his room within five minutes. The family said he has had the very best of medical care.
The severe aplastic anemia basically meant that Chandler’s body was not making any blood and when the initial treatments they tried at the IWK didn’t work he went to the Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto for a bone marrow transplant.
Chandler went to Toronto at the end of February and the bone marrow transplant was carried out March 3, then he returned to Halifax at the end of the month. His mother rented an apartment in the city and he initially went to the IWK three times a week.
In June, the family were able to move back to the Saint John area so Chandler could go to the hospital there but now he has been given the okay to return home to the island which he couldn’t do before because it was just too isolated.
Now that their son is going home, his parents are also moving back to their homes on the island too and his mother, who had been off work since he became sick, will be returning to her job as meat manager at the Save Easy.
She said they will still be running back and forth for regular check-ups, but all the bad stuff is now behind Chandler, and he is looking forward to doing things with his friends on the island again.

[OhioChick]

7. The US should be ashamed of this......

and I'd be willing to wager that the number of uninsured is much, much higher.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

9. It's not just kids

If you're over fifty and self-employed, health insurance can be nearly unaffordable. In order to afford health insurance, I've had to raise my deductible so high that it's useless for all but catastrophic conditions.

The only benefit I get otherwise is that my insurance company's "preferred providers" give me a slight break on out-of-pocket costs. :-(

[DollyM]

14. boy, isn't that the truth!

My hubby is 53, with diabetes, he works two part time jobs (well, one now as the grant he was on at the college where he works was not re-approved) and didn't have insurance and was in fact, considered unisurable. Ironically, now we qualify for Medicaid cards so today I went to the Dr. for a knee injury I had from 5 months ago and hubby is going today to try and get prescriptions filled for all the medications he takes. I don't know how we are going to pay the mortgage but at least our medical bills we be covered for now.

[savemefromdumbya]

10. It is shameful that this country does not provide healthcare to all

It would appear everybody just accepts the fact. I want an NHS

[Az_lefty]

11. Where's all the Pro-Lifers on this one????

The U.S. has the second worse infant mortality rate in the industrialized world (2m/yr).

=> http://www.cnn.com/2006/HEALTH/parenting/05/08/mothers.index/

So why don't all those "hi and mighty" pro-lifers in Congress harp about this issue? Because those lousy hypocrites would have to address the issue of Health Care!

[a la izquierda]

12. This is a disgrace...

and everyone on here knows that it's not just kids. I'd go without insurance for my kids if I had to (and if I had kids). My husband just got insurance-he's self-employed and the insurance for him is astronomical. His job requires him to be on the road, working in nightclubs and bars and if something had ever happened to him prior to having insurance, we'd be ruined for life. All because we couldn't afford it, even though he's gainfully employed. Thankfully for me the university I attend pays the health insurance for its graduate students, if we are teaching assistants. Otherwise, between dental insurance and my husband's monthly insurance payments, we'd be broke.
A good friend of mine is from Canada and I met her father a few weeks back. He's a very conservative man, but does not and cannot understand how the US does not have a nationalized healthcare system. He lives in the Yukon Territory and any time he needs to get a procedure that cannot be accommodated up there, the government flies him to either Calgary, Edmonton or Vancouver for treatment.

This might be something Democrats latch onto while campaigning.

[Supersedeas]

13. but Corp profits are up uP UP....(Bush Family Values)

[ProudDad]

16. And Schwartzfucker has promised

to veto a single-payer bill that passed both houses of the California Legislature.

I hope the FUCKER STROKES OUT SOON from all the steroids he took!!!!

--------------------------

PLEASE EMAIL HIM whether you're from California or not!!!!

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x2812979