Uninsured Parents Should Be Aware That Their Insurance Can Cover Their Children

As parents, the health of your children should always come first. That is why health insurance is available to make sure that you or your children are covered anytime you get sick. However, a new study has surfaced saying that there are still parents of minority children in America who are not aware that their children actually qualify for government health insurance.

According to the study's author, Dr. Glenn Flores who also happens to be the chairman of health policy research for the Medica Research Institute in Minnetonka, Minnesota, their findings revealed an immediate need to educate parents about Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP). "The findings also indicate a need to improve Medicaid/CHIP outreach and enrollment," he added, upi.com reported.

For the study, the researchers studied 267 uninsured but eligible Hispanic and black children in Texas. The investigators found in the data that only 49 percent of their parents knew their children were eligible for government insurance. They also found that the average time for the children to be uninsured is 14 months and 5 percent had never been insured.

Parents usually use the reason that health insurance cost so much that's why they chose not to insure their child. The authors also noticed that the reason most kids lose their insurance is because it passed the expiry date and the parents did not bother to reapply.

U.S News said that researchers also found out that there's at least 38 percent of children who had a substandard health, two-thirds having special health care needs, and 64 percent without a primary care provider.

The authors also found out that some of the health needs that were unmet included: general and mental health care in seven out of ten recorded cases, dental care in 61 percent of the children, and vision for almost half of the kids. There were also about 67 percent needing mobility aids/devices and 57 percent that needed specialty care.

Because of the children's health issues, the study discovered that more than one-third of parents had a hard time making ends meet, 23 percent of them decreased their working time, and one in ten parents opted to stop working to care for their children.

They study authors explained that minority children in the United States have the lowest insurance rates. They also said that minority children in America have the lowest insurance rates. Hispanic and black children account for 53 percent of uninsured children in the country, even if they only comprise half of the total population of U.S. children.