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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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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, and So Do Their Kids

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Monday, September 15, 2014   

RICHMOND, 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 Michael Cassidy, president of The Commonwealth Institute, says numerous studies have confirmed the assumption that children do better when their parents have access to health care.

"If we say we care about the health care of our kids, we also have to be concerned about the health care of their parents,” he says, “because we know that the two are very much linked."

Critics of health care reform say it would be unaffordable.

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

The Virginia General Assembly begins a special session to discuss Medicaid expansion this week.

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 Cassidy, there are a number of reasons children do better when their parents have health coverage.

He says staying healthy means parents are physically, financially and emotionally better able to care for their children.

He adds parents with health insurance understand the system better.

"They're better able to support and care for their children,” he explains. “But then in addition, they're familiar with how to connect to a doctor, because the parents know how insurance works and how to use it."





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