Group Ranks County Among Worst at Insuring Children

Orange County ranked near the bottom among 12 communities nationwide in the number of children without health insurance, a nonpartisan research group announced Tuesday.

In a study of randomly selected areas, including Boston and Seattle, the Center for Studying Health System Change found that 16.9% of Orange County’s children lack health-care coverage--6 percentage points higher than the national average. Only Little Rock, Ark.--at 18.5%-- and Miami--at 22.4%--had higher rates, according to the center, which is funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

“That is an alarming rate, a very alarming rate,” said Burt Winer, a vice president for Lutheran Social Services in Orange. “It’s very important that every child has the ability to get medical care. I don’t think that should be a political issue. That should be a bipartisan issue that everyone should respond to.”

Orange County Supervisor William G. Steiner said he is not surprised by the number of uninsured children in the county. Steiner heads a task force that is overseeing the county’s participation in a new state program to provide low-cost health benefits to more than 400,000 California children.

“There is a real sharp line between the haves and have nots in Orange County,” Steiner said. “The dark side is one that people try not to think about, but I think we’re plugging away at this . . . we want people to get access to these [health-care] systems.”

The Washington, D.C.-based center will distribute the health insurance study to more than 16,000 organizations and lawmakers. The report is part of a larger study by the center to track changes in health care over the next several years.

In the study, researchers looked at a dozen metropolitan areas with populations of more than 200,000. The main reason children are uninsured, they found, is that their parents lack access to employer-sponsored coverage. For instance, the mother or father works for firms that do not offer health benefits, the parent isn’t working or the parent isn’t eligible for insurance.

Winer, of Lutheran Social Services, noted that Orange County has a large percentage of new immigrant workers, who often can find only low-wage, service-industry jobs that do not provide health care.

The study’s author, James D. Reschovsky, said he could not explain the precise reasons for Orange County’s ranking. But one reason, he said, is that 26% of the children in the county have Spanish-speaking parents who are not fluent in English, compared with 17% nationally. (Researchers interviewed only English or Spanish speakers). According to researchers, people who are not fluent in English can be hesitant about filling out complex applications for health-care coverage. Some families fear any official document might result in deportation.

The rate of uninsured children varied widely among the surveyed communities, with a high of 22.4% in Miami and a low of 4.4% in Lansing, Mich. Researchers did not account for the variation. But in general, Reschovsky said, cities with a large number of small businesses that do not offer health insurance have more uninsured children than Lansing, for instance, which has big employers such as General Motors and Michigan State University.