Easier Access to Healthcare for Children Could Prove Beneficial for Education

In an article on HealthAffairs.Org, writers Sylvia Guendelman and Michelle Pearl delve into the idea of children's healthcare.

Guendelman and Pearl wrote that "Under new regulations for Medicaid and the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), states can extend health insurance to child enrollees’ uninsured parents. We compared the extent to which child-only and family coverage (child and parent insured) ensure health care access and use for children in working-poor families. Among these children, 21 percent were uninsured, as were 30 percent of their parents."

This raises the question, what kind of effect will better access to healthcare have on the education of these children? In my opinion, it will be a positive effect. Children who live among "working-poor" families are already less likely to receive the same education as their better off counterparts in middle to upper class families. According to the article: "Children and adults living below 200 percent of the federal poverty level ($33,400 for a family of four in 1999) were more than three times less likely than their higher-income counterparts to have health insurance. Working-poor families faced the highest risk in securing access to care. Children of the working poor are far more likely than children of nonworking-poor families to be uninsured." They don't live in the same environments that promote good education, and they can't afford to be sent somewhere else to remedy the situation.

Also, if these children already have trouble getting healthcare, that means more sick days, more missed classes, lessons they're missing out on, education they're lacking. However, with easier access to healthcare, they can bypass all of that. No longer will they have to miss school because they couldn't afford flu vaccinations, medicine, or other medical reasons that could hold them back from attending school.