Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Poor Families in America's Health Care Crisis
- 1 The Unrealized Hope of Welfare Reform: Implications for Health Care
- 2 The Health Care Welfare State in America
- 3 The Tattered Health Care Safety Net for Poor Americans
- 4 State Differences in Health Care Policies and Coverage
- 5 Work and Health Insurance: A Tenuous Tie for the Working Poor
- 6 Confronting the System: Minority Group Identity and Powerlessness
- 7 The Nonexistent Safety Net for Parents
- 8 Health Care for All Americans
- References
- Index
7 - The Nonexistent Safety Net for Parents
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Poor Families in America's Health Care Crisis
- 1 The Unrealized Hope of Welfare Reform: Implications for Health Care
- 2 The Health Care Welfare State in America
- 3 The Tattered Health Care Safety Net for Poor Americans
- 4 State Differences in Health Care Policies and Coverage
- 5 Work and Health Insurance: A Tenuous Tie for the Working Poor
- 6 Confronting the System: Minority Group Identity and Powerlessness
- 7 The Nonexistent Safety Net for Parents
- 8 Health Care for All Americans
- References
- Index
Summary
For the parents in our study, one of the greatest threats to their children's health insurance coverage came as a result of their leaving the welfare rolls and going to work. As we have heard in the previous chapters, those parents who somehow managed to earn enough money to move the family above the poverty line ran the risk of losing Medicaid even for their younger children. The extension of Medicaid coverage to children in families with incomes well above the poverty line and the introduction of the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) represent responses by Congress to a clearly irrational aspect of public health policy that penalized work and that left many working poor families without any source of health care coverage for their children. Unfortunately, even though Congress has partially addressed the problem that working poor families face in providing care to their children, it has done little to address the problem of the lack of coverage for their parents (Davidoff et al. 2004; Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured 2003).
Because of the lack of complete and comprehensive family coverage, many of the families in our study faced the harsh reality that some family members, very frequently the adults, had no health care coverage. As we have noted throughout, those families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid or SCHIP are at high risk of incomplete family coverage (Hanson 2001; Institute of Medicine 2002b).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Poor Families in America's Health Care Crisis , pp. 158 - 185Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006