Many Kids Lack Insurance, Despite Having Insured Parents

Oct. 22 -- TUESDAY, Oct. 21 (HealthDay News) -- Insured parents don't necessarily mean insured kids.

So say researchers who found that more than 3 percent of U.S. children and adolescents are uninsured or underinsured at some point during any given year -- despite having at least one parent with health insurance.

That translates into almost 3 million U.S. children with no medical care at all and no access to prescription drugs over a full year. Slightly more than half of that number qualify for public coverage but aren't enrolled.

Overall, more than 9 million U.S. children are uninsured; some 18 million have a coverage gap at one time or another, according to the study.

"This is millions of parents unable to access stable, continuous health-care coverage for themselves and their children. These arepainful realities, choices to forego and delay care every day," study author Dr. Jennifer E. DeVoe, an assistant professor of family medicine at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, said at a news conference Tuesday.

The conference was sponsored by the Journal of the American Medical Association, which published DeVoe's study, along with other studies addressing health-care concerns, in a special Oct. 22/29 themed issue, "Health of the Nation."

A lack of health-care coverage for children can have serious consequences, according to a second study in the same issue of the journal. About half of U.S. children without health insurance had to go without medical care or prescription medications while they were uninsured, said researchers from the University of Rochester Medical Center. Even more children went without preventive care, including receiving necessary vaccinations.

The authors of the first study looked at data from 2002 to 2005 on children and adolescents under the age of 19 living with at least one parent. The study included more than 39,000 participants.

Their analysis found that 3.3 percent of children and adolescents were uninsured, even though they had at least one insured parent.