‘Wake-up call’: Idaho has one of the highest rates of uninsured young children
Idaho has one of the highest rates of uninsured children younger than 6 across the country, according to a new report.
The report, released Monday from Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, found that in 2024, nearly 8% of Idaho children younger than 6 were uninsured, the fifth-highest rate across the U.S.
That represented an increase from about 7,900 uninsured young Idaho children in 2022 to 10,700 in 2024, which is a roughly 36% increase.
“All it takes is one broken arm on the school playground to financially devastate a family already struggling to make ends meet,” Ivy Walker, policy associate at Idaho Voices for Children, said in a news release. “This should be a wake-up call for Idaho policymakers because the unfortunate truth is that children’s access to health care is about to get much worse.”
Why did the insurance coverage rate change?
Across the country, about 5.4% of children younger than 6 years old didn’t have insurance in 2024, an increase of about one percentage point from 2022, according to the study. Texas topped the list of the highest rate of uninsured young children at nearly 11%, followed by North Dakota and Arizona.
Authors of the report attributed to the increase in uninsured young children in part to Medicaid unwinding. Medicaid administrators paused their eligibility checks during the COVID-19 pandemic, and when they resumed them, people were kicked off Medicaid. In some cases, families were removed from Medicaid even if they still qualified because of “procedural issues,” according to previous Statesman reporting.
Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program represent a “critical source of coverage for young children,” the report said, and many children without insurance would likely qualify for those programs.
“Medicaid enrollment declines, such as those driven by disenrollments during the Medicaid unwinding, typically lead to increases in the rate of child uninsurance, as our prior research has demonstrated,” the report said. “These negative trends are troubling as young children must access timely, appropriate care early in life to set them up for long-term success.”
Idaho lawmakers took aim at Medicaid programs this year in an attempt to address an expected budget deficit. The Legislature introduced a bill to repeal Medicaid expansion — a plan that covers about 90,000 low-income Idaho residents, and which voters approved on a ballot initiative — but that bill ultimately didn’t advance.
The Legislature did pass a bill that put into place three-month work requirements for adults covered by Medicaid expansion, which the bill’s author expected would result in people losing their insurance coverage, the Statesman reported. The Legislature also approved some cuts to provider rates.
Idaho Kids Covered said in a news release that the provider payment rate cuts, along with federal policies, could have far-reaching impacts. Walker said lowering the reimbursement rates means providers could have to make some changes, including reducing the number of Medicaid patients they see or dropping some services.
“As a result, even children who remain insured may face growing barriers to care, including longer wait times, fewer available specialists, and greater travel distances to access services,” Walker said in the release. “For rural Idaho families, these challenges can make it significantly harder to get timely and appropriate care during the most critical years of a child’s development.”
