From Churn to Continuity—Reforming Children’s Coverage

Children need adequate and continuous access to health care to grow, develop, thrive, and ultimately become healthy adults. Losing health insurance coverage, even temporarily, can have devastating consequences for children’s health and well-being, leading to missed opportunities for early detection and treatment of developmental delays, disrupted access to medications, and preventable hospitalizations resulting from exacerbations of chronic conditions like asthma.

For children with medical complexity, disruptions in insurance coverage can mean delaying essential subspecialty care visits, therapies, or surgical procedures. Unfortunately, for children in the US, consistent health insurance coverage is the exception rather than the rule. Transitions on and off coverage, termed insurance churn, are particularly frequent among children in lower- and middle-income families.