PolicyLab

In 2016, PolicyLab researchers found that despite getting their own health care through an employer, caregivers were increasingly choosing Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) to provide insurance for their children. Today, a new national PolicyLab study published in Health Affairs puts this issue back into the spotlight. Our researchers found that more working families are depending on Medicaid and CHIP than ever before. Looking specifically at parent employer type and income, researchers saw that low-income parents working at small businesses were the most likely to rely on public insurance for their child’s health coverage. But surprisingly, researchers also found a significant increase in Medicaid and CHIP coverage among low- and middle-income children with parents working at large companies. These findings suggest that the rising cost of health insurance is pricing more families out of using employer-sponsored care for their children, leading them to seek support from public insurance programs. Read the full study and press release, and learn more about their findings in a new blog post and video below.