Illinois' All Kids program has been very successful.  After its inception the rate of uninsured children in Illinois dropped from 10.4% to 8.1%, which was more than three percentage points below the national rate.  With employer-based coverage becoming less available and affordable for children and adults alike, public health insurance programs are chiefly responsible for the insurance gains among children, more than offsetting losses in private coverage.  The data also shows that while significant disparities continue to exist, the coverage progress achieved in recent years has helped to reduce the disproportionately high uninsured rates experienced by Hispanic children and other racial and ethnic minority children.  Luckily, this is a problem we can solve! 

Things to keep in mind about uninsured children:

• Among uninsured children living with a parent, about six in ten live in two-parent households.
• Almost nine out of ten (88.2%) uninsured children come from families where at least one parent is working.
• Seven in ten (71%) uninsured children in the United States have family incomes below 200% of the Federal Poverty Line ($36,620 for a family of three in 2009). ¹

Every region and county in Illinois has uninsured children.  No matter where you live in Illinois, you have the opportunity to find and insure eligible but unenrolled children.  Keeping that in mind, the larger concentrations of uninsured children are near the metropolitan areas (Chicago, Springfield, Peoria, Decatur and East St. Louis).²   Every uninsured child in the state of Illinois qualifies for All Kids, we just need to find them! 

Check back soon for more information on Illinois' uninsured children.

1 InsureKidsNow.gov

2 Urban Institute analysis of American Community Survey (ACS) 2008 data from the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series (IPUMS), Map: Uninsurance Among Children in Illinoisby Area