Yakima County rates poorly on uninsured children

Leah Beth Ward

Sep. 25, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- YAKIMA, Wash. -- Yakima County has the state's second highest rate of uninsured children among the state's 19 most populous counties, and health researchers say it's only going to get worse.

Numbers crunched from newly released Census data show that 26.6 percent of children in Yakima County were without medical insurance at some time last year -- a rate nearly four times greater than the statewide average of 6.8 percent.

Franklin County had the highest rate at 30 percent. The lowest was Spokane County at 4.1 percent.

"We know these numbers are going to get worse because they don't include the worst of the recession which hit in 2009," Lori Pfingst, assistant director of KidsCount, part of the Human Services Policy Center at the University of Washington, said Thursday in a phone interview.

The numbers come from this year's American Community Survey, an annual sampling of the population by the U.S. Census Bureau. The data covered counties with more than 65,000 people, which excluded 20 of the state's smaller counties.

For the first time, the surveyors asked respondents if their children had health insurance at any time in the past year. Because it was the first year of the question, there are no data from prior years for comparisons.

The high rate for Yakima County surprised Rhonda Hauff, primary care administrator for Yakima Neighborhood Health Services, the downtown clinic that offers sliding-scale medical care and sees many patients on Medicaid and Medicare.

Hauff said most children who come into the clinic are covered by Apple Health for Kids, the state's subsidized program for low-income families. She hypothesized that there is likely a rural-urban split within Yakima County, with high numbers of uninsured in remote, isolated communities, such as White Swan.

"If there's a significant population really hidden and we are missing those kids, we want to find them," Hauff said.

Vickie Ybarra, director of planning and development for the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic, also said the number of uninsured sounded high, but she also said the region's historically large number of children living in poverty is part of the explanation.

From 2005 to 2007, 32 percent of Yakima County children under age 5 lived in families with income below the federal poverty level. In 2007, the poverty threshold for a family of two adults and two children was $21,027.

Ybarra said language barriers and the high mobility of families in the Yakima Valley may also contribute to a low rate of re-enrollment in Apple Health for Kids. Parents must recertify their children every year.

Jon Gould, executive director of the Children's Alliance, a Seattle-based advocacy group, said Yakima County's numbers mean "we have more to do to reach children in isolated rural areas."

Gould said the state has focused its enrollment on "easy-to-find" kids in urban areas.

"This data is a clear call to action for state officials to expedite their enrollment strategies," Gould said.

But Gould also said the state's goal of covering every child by 2010 is still within reach. As of May of this year, 50,000 more children statewide were enrolled than the year before, for a total of 659,000.

--Leah Beth Ward can be reached at 577-7626 or lward@yakimaherald.com.

Newstex ID: KRTB-0407-38272182