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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Health care issues are a prevailing issue in this years presidential election. A new study revealing a startling number of children and teens across the nation without health insurance may fuel the debate.
More than 9 million children across the nation do not have health insurance coverage. At some point in the year, 4 percent of kids and teens face a gap in insurance, regardless of whether their parents are insured. To find these statistics, researchers looked at a cross-sectional sample of 39,588 children and adolescents younger than 19 years of age. They found of the uninsured children, 27.9 percent had an insured parent.
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Discontinuities in childrens health insurance coverage, even for only a few months, are associated with significant unmet health care needs, study authors wrote. In this study, the private system did not do a good job of providing coverage for entire families, they added. It is time to think beyond health insurance models to achieve a sustainable health care system and the best possible health outcomes for all families.
SOURCE: JAMA, 2008;300:1904-1913
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