U.S. Unemployment Having Dramatic Impact on Kids' Health Care Coverage
KANSAS CITY (PRNewswire), May 4, 2008 - Two new studies conducted by researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center point to the negative impact of parental job loss on children's healthcare and the importance of having continuous health insurance coverage to meet children's healthcare needs and reduce healthcare disparities.
The studies were presented Saturday, May 3 at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies in Honolulu.
"These studies describe a situation that should be of grave concern to parents, health care providers and policymakers," says Gerry Fairbrother, Ph.D., a researcher in the division of health policy and clinical effectiveness at Cincinnati Children's who was an author of both studies. "The impact of not having insurance coverage in place year-round hurts children in many ways, including not being able to get the prescribed medications they need, and not having a regular source of health care -- and that puts their health at risk."
The first study shows that children whose parents lose or change jobs were twice as likely to lose their health care coverage as children whose parents did not lose or change jobs. In addition, children with private insurance were more than three times as likely to lose coverage.
"This is a particularly disturbing finding, coming at a time when job loss is becoming more common due to the economy," says Dr. Fairbrother, Ph.D., the study's lead author. "As unemployment rises, more and more children are likely to experience a break in coverage that affects their health care. Our study showed that most of these children are eligible for public coverage but are not getting the coverage to which they are entitled. Much more needs to be done to reach out to children with private coverage when their parents experience job loss or change."
Dr. Fairbrother's study examined data collected over two years from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, a set of large-scale surveys of families and individuals, their medical providers, and employers across the United States. She examined the effect of parental job loss in an early round of data collection with children's insurance coverage in a later round. Children who lost insurance when their parents lost or changed jobs were more likely to be poor, black, from Spanish-speaking homes and reside in the southern United States, according to Dr. Fairbrother.
The second study examined children who did not have continuous coverage -- insurance in place consistently year-round -- and found that they had unmet health care needs similar to the chronically uninsured. These children were three times as likely to have unfilled prescriptions and 14 times as likely not to have a usual source of health care as insured children.
This study used data on 15,447 children up to the age of 17 from the Ohio Family Health Survey, which was conducted from Oct. 2003 to July 2004. The lead author of the study was Joseph Schuchter, an epidemiologist at Cincinnati Children's. Dr. Fairbrother was senior author.
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More Women Than Men Lack Confidence in Preparing for Retirement
KANSAS CITY (PRNewswire), May 4, 2008 - When it comes to the stock market, 54 percent of the pre-retirement women surveyed say they are "frightened" by the idea of entrusting their savings to the market, nearly double the number of men - 30 percent - who say they feel this way.
A total of 42 percent of women surveyed say they feel "intimidated" by preparing for retirement either "sometimes" or "often," as opposed to 29 percent of men. And 47 percent of women feel investing "takes more knowledge and skill" than they have, as opposed to 30 percent of the men surveyed.
"Women need to become more comfortable and confident with retirement saving and the basics of the market so they can create a nest egg that will last," said Lynne Ford, director of Wachovia's Retail Retirement Group.
One difficulty working women face in saving for retirement is that many do not have a 401(k) plan. Of the employed women surveyed, 31 percent said they do not have access to this savings vehicle, versus 19 percent of the men surveyed. Among women who report having a 401 (k), only about a quarter contributed the maximum amount allowed in 2007 versus 33 percent of the male respondents.
An equal number of women and men report having an IRA: 63 percent of women and 65 percent of the men.
Gender Differences in Retirement: Behaviors and Perceptions
In retirement, more women, 35 percent, than men, 22 percent, report withdrawing 10 percent or more of their retirement savings to pay for living expenses. The industry recommendation is to withdraw no more than 4 percent annually.
According to the study, women are also less inclined to link their satisfaction in retirement to how much money they have or to see themselves as having planned effectively for retirement during their working years. Of the men and women who had retired and said it was going "somewhat better" to "much better than expected," money and planning had a significantly different impact on happiness for each gender.
A strong majority - 65 percent - of men said they have "more money than they expected," as opposed to 55 percent of women. Also, 53 percent of men said they "planned effectively before retirement for their finances" versus 44 percent of the women surveyed.
"The study shows us that more men attribute their satisfaction in retirement to having more money than do women, and more men say they planned effectively in the pre-retirement years than do women," Ford said. "We'd like to see an increase in women citing planning as an ingredient for satisfaction in retirement because having a plan will help people achieve a greater sense of stability."
Richard Day Research of Evanston, Ill., conducted 2,100 online interviews for Wachovia with respondents between the ages of 35 and 70 and with household assets or income of $75,000 or more, either currently or in the year before retirement, excluding the value of real estate holdings.
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