Fewer employers offer insurance

Only about 46 percent of working families earning moderate salaries now can get health insurance through their employers. That's down 9 percent from a decade ago. Meanwhile, those earning $80,000 a year hold steady with 78 percent of them getting insurance through their employer.

That news comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, in a report coinciding with Bush's threat to defund SCHIP — the State Children's Health Insurance Program.

Here in Colorado, that's 14.3 percent of the state's children uninsured. More than 70 percent of them live in families at or below 200 percent of poverty ($40,000 annually) and more than 75 percent of them live in households where at least one adult is employed full time. The fact that Colorado's numbers are among the worst rather than among the best is especially disgraceful considering that this state is in the top ten per capita in earnings.

Elsewhere in the report:

• Nearly 9 million children in the United States are uninsured - that's an average of 11.5 percent, or about one in every eight kids.
• States with the highest percentage of uninsured children include Texas (20.3 percent), Florida (16.9 percent), New Mexico (16.6 percent), Nevada (16.4 percent) and Montana (16.2 percent).
• States with the lowest percentage of uninsured children are Vermont (5.6 percent), New Hampshire (6.0 percent), Michigan (6.1 percent), Hawaii (6.2 percent), Minnesota (6.5 percent) and Nebraska (6.5 percent).
• For uninsured children in families that earn modest incomes, the situation is even more dire. The analysis shows nearly two out of three uninsured kids in the United States (64 percent) live with adults who earn modest incomes, calculated at roughly $40,000 or less for a family of four.
• States with the highest percentage of uninsured children who are in families with modest incomes are: the District of Columbia (73.9 percent), Mississippi (73.7 percent), Kentucky (73.4 percent), Arizona (72.3 percent) and North Dakota (71.5 percent).
• States with the lowest percentage of uninsured children who are in families with modest incomes are: Vermont (36.2 percent), New Hampshire (41.3 percent), Hawaii (42.5 percent), Wyoming (46.2 percent) and Massachusetts (48.0 percent).
• Last fiscal year, more than 6 million children in the United States were enrolled in SCHIP.