{"id":319052,"date":"2026-06-02T11:35:27","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T11:35:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/319052\/"},"modified":"2026-06-02T11:35:27","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T11:35:27","slug":"texas-has-more-uninsured-young-children-than-any-other-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/319052\/","title":{"rendered":"Texas has more uninsured young children than any other state"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/p>\n

The nationwide uninsured rate for young children stands at 5.3% \u2014 the highest it\u2019s been in almost a decade, a new report says.<\/p>\n

Kin Man Hui\/Staff photographer<\/p>\n

A new report found that the number of uninsured young children increased significantly between 2022 and 2024, leaving more children under the age of 6 with less certain access to health care. And Texas, the report found, is the state with the highest rate of young children without insurance.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A report published Monday<\/a> by Georgetown University\u2019s Center for Children and Families found that the nationwide uninsured rate for young children \u2014 defined as children younger than 6 \u2014 grew a full percentage point from 2022 to 2024. That puts the current national uninsured rate for young children at 5.3%, the report said, which is the highest it\u2019s been in almost a decade.<\/p>\n

The report pinned the increase, at least in part, to the nationwide Medicaid unwinding. The unwinding has seen millions of people disenrolled from Medicaid<\/a>, after COVID-era enrollment protocols were removed in 2023.<\/p>\n

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Texas\u2019 uninsured rate for the young children is more than double the national average, at 10.8%. That means more than 1 in 10 young Texas children did not have health care coverage in 2024.<\/p>\n

Between the two years that the report analyzed, the number of uninsured young children in Texas increased from about 180,000 to about 253,000. That\u2019s an increase of more than 73,000 uninsured children under the age of 6.\u00a0<\/p>\n

By sheer numbers, according to the report, Texas accounts for more than one-fifth of the country\u2019s uninsured young children.<\/p>\n

In a Monday press call, the executive director of Georgetown\u2019s Center for Children and Families, Joan Alker, said children who lose Medicaid coverage are often still eligible for that coverage.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe know that, when children lose Medicaid, it\u2019s generally not because they\u2019re not eligible anymore,\u201d Alker said. \u201cIt usually has to do with paperwork barriers, fear, other kinds of issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

Texas\u2019 ranking among the uninsured young children statistics also fits in with the state\u2019s overall health insurance rates. Texas has long led the country in the percentage of people of all ages who do not have health care coverage. In 2023, according to a report from The Commonwealth Fund, more than 21% of Texans were uninsured<\/a>.<\/p>\n

For young children, though, the effects of being uninsured may be magnified.<\/p>\n

In the press call, Georgetown experts noted that the early childhood years are particularly crucial for development. Not having insurance \u2014 and therefore not having as much access to health care \u2014 can be catastrophic for a young child.<\/p>\n

Alker said the increasing uninsured rates are \u201ca disaster, for children, in the making.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Elisabeth Wright Burak, a senior fellow at Georgetown\u2019s Center for Children and Families, said on the press call that she\u2019s concerned the uninsured rate for young children may have continued to increase in 2025 and 2026, the two years after the period analyzed for the report.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis really should be a wake-up call for state leaders,\u201d Burak said. \u201cWe\u2019re concerned based on the data \u2026 that we\u2019re going to see this only get worse in the years to come.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The nationwide uninsured rate for young children stands at 5.3% \u2014 the highest it\u2019s been in almost a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319053,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-319052","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319052","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319052"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319052\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319053"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319052"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319052"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319052"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}