Two new studies conducted by researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center point to the negative impact of parental job loss on children's healthcare and the importance of having continuous health insurance coverage to meet children's healthcare needs and reduce healthcare disparities.
The studies will be presented Saturday, May 3 at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Honolulu.
"These studies describe a situation that should be of grave concern to parents, health care providers and policymakers," says Gerry Fairbrother, Ph.D., a researcher in the division of health policy and clinical effectiveness at Cincinnati Children's who was an author of both studies. "The impact of not having insurance coverage in place year-round hurts children in many ways, including not being able to get the prescribed medications they need, and not having a regular source of health care -- and that puts their health at risk."
The first study shows that children whose parents lose or change jobs were twice as likely to lose their health care coverage as children whose parents did not lose or change jobs. In addition, children with private insurance were more than three times as likely to lose coverage.
"This is a particularly disturbing finding, coming at a time when job loss is becoming more common due to the economy," says Dr. Fairbrother, Ph.D., the study's lead author. "As unemployment rises, more and more children are likely to experience a break in coverage that affects their health care. Our study showed that most of these children are eligible for public coverage but are not getting the coverage to which they are entitled. Much more needs to be done to reach out to children with private coverage when their parents experience job loss or change."