A report prepared by Georgetown University researchers and the National Council of La Raza revealed that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) helped reduce the rate of uninsured Latino children in North Carolina by two percentage points since its introduction in 2014.
Before the implementation of the ACA, about 12% of Latino children in the state were uninsured.
One of the authors of the paper, Steven Lopez, remarked that many Latino kids from low-income families got insured when their parents enrolled for ACA-affiliated coverage.
"If adults are signing up for coverage through the marketplace, they are finding out that there are options for their children through Medicaid and CHIP," Lopez observed.
He also stated that North Carolina abolishing the five-year waiting period for legally-resident immigrant children applying for Medicaid also helped boost coverage rates.
According to the report, 93% of the country’s Latino children are considered U.S. citizens. Despite this, they are twice as likely as white children to be uninsured.
In North Carolina alone, Latino children make up over a quarter of the state’s uninsured kids.
Lopez reasoned that Latino kids are less likely to have any sort of health insurance since a good number of them belong to low income households. He also pointed out that just because most Latino children are U.S. citizens it does not necessarily mean that their parents are, too.
