Despite lower uninsured rates that in previous eras, Texas still has one of the highest rates of uninsured children in the country, reports member station KUT.And those rates seem to differ according to racial and ethnic lines, according to new evidence.
A report from the Center for Public Policy Priorities has compared how children of different races and ethnicities line up according to indicators like health, education and poverty. 15 percent of Hispanic children in Texas don’t have health insurance; that’s one of the highest rates nationwide for Latino children. One of the main issues is one of ignorance: Immigrants aren’t always aware of the financial assistance that’s available to them. And about one-third of children in Texas live with one or more immigrant parents.
Jennifer Lee, a research associate with the Center for Public Policy Priorities, explains: “When the most recent data came out on uninsured rates, we saw that states who decided to expand Medicaid coverage to low income parents saw the uninsured rates improve for children and parents much more than states who decided not to do that.”