AMERICA’S SCHOOL CHILDREN SEEM TO BE FORGOTTEN
…A masked student finally going to school in New Your City
Today, millions of American kids are without insurance
The future of this country is our children. But since the start of the current pandemic, America’s children seem to have been forgotten.
Many low-income students had previously received their largest daily meals via their schools lunch-time programs. That has of course disappeared with the current remote school teaching due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
But one of the even worse issues is that according to recent Census Bureau data, when so many people lost their jobs due to the pandemic, they also lost their employer-provided insurance. According to that data, 726,000 American kids became uninsured. In fact, in a new report from the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families estimates that over and above the Census Bureau data, an additional 300,000 children have become uninsured in 2020.
So, what does that mean?
It means that, if all that is correct, since Donald Trump came to power, more than 1 million children have lost their insurance. When added to the already uninsured kids, that brings the total of uninsured kids in the greatest nation on earth to 4.7 million kids.
It must also be noted that of all the democratic nations on earth, the United States is the only one that does not have universal health care for all its citizens.
So, what does all this mean to these children?
Without having health coverage, children are less likely to get critical screenings such as hearing and vision tests, vaccines and other preventive care. That includes simply adequate treatment whenever they do get sick, and that is with Covid-19 or otherwise. Losing these early investments in a children’s health can have serious, and very expensive, long-term consequences as these kids are growing up.
What is a serious problem that is caused by this pandemic, is that our children are bearing a larger portion of the financial hardship. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities makes clear, households with kids report higher rates of food insecurity, housing instability and other metrics of financial insecurity.
As an example, according to US Agriculture Department data for 2019, roughly 5% of adults with children reported that their kids were sometimes or often not eating enough at some point within a given 30-day period. The Census Bureau asked a similar question at the end of September, and 9 to 14% reported this same problem.
Again, the known long-term developmental benefits derived from delivering adequate nutrition to children signal that our society is likely to pay for today’s child hunger for years to come. The same goes for schooling.
Most American children began this school year at least partly, if not entirely, online, with children of color much more likely to be learning virtually, according to an analysis from Chalkbeat (a non-profit organization that reports on education issues in American communities), and also from the Associated Press (AP). Beyond the inconvenience and frustration for parents who must supervise their children’s schooling, this also raises the obvious risk of intellectual and developmental delays among children. The potential scarring could linger long after the pandemic recedes.
Unfortunately, the news coverage these days of this issue has been scant at best.
It appears that the politicians and the voters have simply accepted these multiple childhood-related crises as being an inevitable crisis from the pandemic. However, the deteriorating well-being of all American children is the result of these policy choices we have made as a country. Or even if these choices were made by our government on our behalf, the results for our children are unacceptable.
There was no law of the universe that required the Trump administration to bully states into making it harder for children, and their parents, to remain enrolled in public health insurance. No one forced the administration to frighten immigrant parents away from enrolling their eligible, US citizen-children, in Medicaid or even other public services. This is the main reason the uninsured rate for Hispanic children has spiked in recent years to 9.2% in 2019.
No one required cities to reopen bars and restaurants before they did classrooms. No one made officials abandon child-care facilities and schools, which are crying out for financial assistance so they can operate safely and effectively. No one forced lawmakers to end the $600 weekly federal supplement to unemployment benefits that was helping parents put food on the table and keep a roof over their children’s heads.
But the US voters have choices, and we can make different choices.
As an example, we could elect a president who favors a different set of priorities. You might not know it, but Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has endorsed several major policies, including an expansion of Section 8 housing subsidies. In addition, the child tax credit that would collectively cut child poverty by more than half.
This is according to an analysis released last week by researchers at Columbia University’s Center on Poverty and Social Policy. Democratic lawmakers have already broadly endorsed versions of Biden’s tax policies, suggesting a more wholesale changeover of power next month might also result in different and better outcomes for our kids.
The wronged children do not have the power to vote for this president.
But we do.
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