COLUMBUS, Ohio – The number of uninsured children in Ohio has increased by 30,000 in recent years, bringing the rate of children without health care coverage to 5.6%, largely due to minors losing Medicaid and CHIP.
That was among the findings in an analysis by Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, which looked at new data from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., in the U.S. Census’ American Community Survey. The analysis reviewed uninsured people under age 18 between 2022 and 2024, a period when federal pandemic coverage mandates ended.
In 2022, about 122,000 Ohio children were uninsured, or 4.5%. That rate increased to 5.6% by 2024, which landed Ohio on a list of 22 states with statistically significant increases in uninsured children.
Medicaid and CHIP are joint state-federal health care programs for people who are low-income, or have certain health conditions, such as pregnancy, blindness and other disabilities.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the federal government prohibited states from kicking people off Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program. By April 1, 2023, states were allowed to end coverage for ineligible beneficiaries, such as kids whose families earned too much money.
The period in which states began disenrolling people from Medicaid and CHIP is known as the “unwinding” period. Ohio Medicaid officials reviewed the eligibility of over 3.5 million beneficiaries between March 2023 and March 2024. More than 600,000 Ohio children and adults were disenrolled.
“There really is no need to explain why having health insurance for children” is important, said Joan Alker, the executive director and co-founder of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown. “No parent wants to have to think twice about cost when taking their child to the doctor or picking up their (order at) their pharmacy. Health care is expensive, and it continues to become more expensive, and families can be bankrupted by even a short gap in coverage for their child.”
The state with the highest increase in children losing health insurance between 2022-2024 was in Texas, which disenrolled 1.3 million children, Alker said.
Ohio’s rate of uninsured children in 2024 was slightly below the national average of 6%. The state expanded Medicaid in 2014, which allowed more lower-income adults on the health insurance program.
“States that have not picked up the Affordable Care Act Medicaid expansion for adults saw much greater increases in the child uninsured rate, and they were higher to begin with, than states that have expanded Medicaid for parents and other adults,” Alker said.
CHIP and Medicaid experts say that the number of uninsured children in the U.S. will continue to increase, thanks Congress passing the One, Big Beautiful Bill Act, which cuts Medicaid by $1 trillion over the next decade.
“No one can be protected from a trillion dollars of cuts, and so this is a very troubling situation,” Alker said.
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