Good News For Alabama Kids
Uninsured number continue to drop.
The number of children in Alabama without any health insurance has continued to drop.
The numbers are from the U.S. Census Bureau, and they show almost 49 of every 50 children in the state now have health insurance….despite the fact that almost a quarter of alabama’s kids live in poverty
Kimble Forrister is the Executive Director of the Alabama Arise Citizen’s Policy Project. He says it is “astonishing to us that we’ve gotten an uninsured rate down to 2.4 per cent…we started out at 3.1 per cent last year but 20 years ago, before we really started tackling it, we were at 14 per cent!”
Rhonda Mann is the Policy and Research Director at “VOICES for Alabama’s Children” and she says the kids count data book results are similar to the info from alabama arise: “This is good news to have our children covered at such a high rate, that brings so much comfort and assurance to families that they do’t have to worry about taking their child to the doctor or putting food on the table or putting gas in their car to go to work.”
Credit for the program, and the improvement in alabama, goes to federal funding for the CHIPS program. But that funding will run out at the end of September.
