Coverage
Our goal at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation is for all Americans to have health insurance coverage.
It should be affordable, continuous, and portable; include necessary, appropriate and effective health care services; promote high-quality and cost-effective health care; and be based on shared responsibilities among the public and private sectors and individuals.
Today nearly 18 percent of the population under age 65, and 12 percent of the population under age 18, go without health insurance (see following table). Lack of coverage is the single greatest barrier to obtaining timely, appropriate health care services.
Since the creation of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) in 1997, the number of uninsured children in America has decreased while the overall numbers of uninsured have risen dramatically. SCHIP’s success inspired much of our work in 2007 to highlight its importance under the Cover the Uninsured campaign banner and to encourage SCHIP expansion as Congress and the White House consider its reauthorization. To buttress this effort, we commissioned the Urban Institute to produce a series of timely analyses and focused the first several papers on issues such as affordability, tax credits and eligibility as they relate to SCHIP reauthorization.
While the reauthorization of SCHIP has been postponed after a difficult and partisan debate between Congress and the White House, the bipartisan nature of the proposal in the Senate and the continued interest in health care issues in the current environment presents new opportunities for progress as America prepares for a new Congress and a new administration in 2009.
We also launched two new programs in 2007: State Health Access Reform Evaluation and Consumer Voices for Coverage: Strengthening State Advocacy Networks to Expand Health Coverage designed respectively to evaluate and advocate for coverage expansions at the state level.
In 2008 we will continue to implement a three-pronged strategy to reach our goal of ensuring that everyone in America has stable, affordable health care coverage, through the development of policies and programs aimed at expanding health coverage and maximizing enrollment in existing coverage programs:
- We will work in states nationwide to advocate for, plan and improve the implementation of policies and programs that expand health insurance coverage, to evaluate these coverage expansions and disseminate the lessons learned from them;
- We will develop programs to maximize enrollment in existing coverage programs such as Medicaid and SCHIP;
- As the health care debate heats up, we will support and sustain policy development and dialogue about comprehensive reform.
For additional information about our initiatives and objectives, visit www.rwjf.org/coverage.
Uninsurance Rates for People 0–18 and 0–64 Years of Age, 1997–2006
SOURCE: Compiled by the State Health Access Data Assistance Center (SHADAC), University of Minnesota School of Public Health, using data from the 1998–2007 Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement.