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Volume 1 Issue 2 July 1998 |
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Volume 1 Issue 2 July 1998 |
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One-Fourth of Los Angeles County Children Are Uninsured And Nearly One-Third Are Covered By Medi-Cal |
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Children without
health insurance face significant barriers to receiving primary health care services.1
This report, based on data from the Los Angeles County Health Survey, provides a profile
of the health insurance status of Los Angeles County children by age, race-ethnicity,
income and area of residence.2 In addition, this report describes the use of health services by children in Los Angeles County who have no insurance coverage, and the implications for children’s health status. Because there are limited population-based data on uninsured children in different areas of Los Angeles County, this information is important to effectively plan children’s health services under California’s Healthy Families Program. Future reports will describe the health status of children and the financial and non-financial barriers that families in Los Angeles County face in obtaining health care for their children. |
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1998-Year Of Healthy Children The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors
proclaimed 1998 as the Year of Healthy Children and requested the Department of Health
Services (DHS) take the lead in implementing this initiative. As part of its public health
assessment and planning functions, DHS has initiated a series of child health assessment
reports. The first report, Toward Improving the Health and Futures of Los Angeles
Children, released on April 1, 1998, focused on developing a better understanding of
child health. This issue and issue 3 of LA Health, on access barriers to health care
services in the county, represent the second round of child health assessment reports. DHS
plans to publish a final report on all accomplishments and issues regarding the status of
children’s health in the county.
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Uninsured Children Are Concentrated Among Low Income Families, Latinos And Asians. Previous reports have shown that Los Angeles County has the highest percentage of people without health insurance in California.3 There are an estimated 696,000 uninsured children in the county, or one-fourth of children under 18.4 Nearly one-third (31%) of children are covered by Medi-Cal, and 44% have private health insurance through their own employer, their parents’ employers, or through independently purchased plans (see Figure 1). 1.P. Newcheck, J. Stoddard, D. Hughes and M. Pearl, Health insurance and access to primary care for children, NEJM, 338(8): 1998. 2.Two geographic areas of the county are used: Service Planning Areas (SPAs) and Health Districts. SPAs are eight regions of the county each with a total population of approximately 1.2 million people. They were established by the Children’s Planning Council and approved by the Board of Supervisors as geographic areas for purposes of planning in 1993. There are 26 health districts. 3.H. Schauffler, UC Berkeley and E. R. Brown, UCLA, The State of Health Insurance in California, 1997 4.The estimated percentage of uninsured children is subject to sampling error and could be as low as 23% and as high as 26%. |
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