Elect Susie Flynn

Facts

Children cannot take care of themselves, and they have no power to influence change. Here’s why you should use your vote to get children the health insurance they deserve.

More than nine million children in the United States—one in nine—have no health insurance coverage.
Every 46 seconds, another baby is born uninsured.
It costs less to provide health insurance coverage to children than to any other group of people.
The majority of uninsured children live in two-parent households and almost 90 percent live in families where at least one parent works.
Increases in private health insurance costs are dramatically outpacing increases in wages.
Ensuring that children have timely, affordable access to health care is a smart economic move. For instance, enrolling uninsured children in health coverage significantly reduces hospitalizations for preventable illnesses.
Uninsured children are more than five times as likely as insured children to have gone more than two years without a doctor visit.
What the United States spends on health care per person is more than twice the average spent in industrialized countries, yet we rank near the bottom among those nations in infant mortality rates.
Existing health care programs for low-income children vary widely, with different standards for eligibility, cost sharing, and benefits in each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia.
Americans over 65 have access to health coverage under the Medicare program regardless of income, but children have no such guarantee, leaving millions of needy children without timely access to critical health and mental health services.

To learn more about the crisis of the nine million uninsured children,
visit the Children's Defense Fund Web site.