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Pulling back the curtains on wage-theft enforcement in MN; Trump's latest attack is on RFK, Jr; NM LGBTQ+ equality group endorses 2024 'Rock Star' candidates; Michigan's youth justice reforms: Expanded diversion, no fees.

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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg says rebuilding Baltimore's Key Bridge will be challenging and expensive. An Alabama Democrat flips a state legislature seat and former Connecticut senator Joe Lieberman dies at 82.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

Study: Parents Benefit from Expanding Medicaid – Which Helps Children

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Monday, September 15, 2014   

CHARLESTON, W.Va. – Getting parents health coverage improves the well being of their children, according to new research that says states that expand Medicaid are doing a much better job of covering those adults.

The report from the Urban Institute shows that states that have rejected Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act have about twice as many uninsured parents as states that opted for the expansion.

And Renate Pore, director of health care policy at West Virginians for Affordable Health Care, says numerous studies have confirmed the assumption that children do better when their parents have insurance.

"If the parents are covered, they're probably more conscious about the use of health care, and they're probably a less desperate family,” she points out. “If they're healthier, they're better able to take care of their kids, including getting them into health care."

Critics of health care reform say it would be unaffordable.

So far, however, it has proven to be far less costly than expected.

West Virginia has seen a dramatic drop in the portion of its population without health insurance since the law was passed.

Pore says when parents have health coverage, they are physically, financially and emotionally better able to care for their children.

She adds parents with health insurance understand the system better, because they're connected to it.

Genevieve Kenney, co-director of the Health Policy Center at the Urban Institute, is one of the study authors.

She says the effects of health care reform – on children and adults – seem to have been overshadowed by the titanic ideological battles around the law.

"There's been so much focus and rhetoric around the politics of the Affordable Care Act, and maybe not quite as much on the human dimension – what is at stake for families," she says.

According to the study, states that have expanded Medicaid have seen a one-third drop in the rate of parents without insurance – twice the national average.

States such as Virginia, which have not expanded Medicaid, have seen no significant change.





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