Incremental approaches to covering uninsured children: design and policy issues

More than 10.5 million children were uninsured throughout 1995. The number of uninsured children remains high, even in the face of continued expansions of Medicaid designed to cover low-income children. As a result, interest persists in developing additional approaches for covering uninsured children. Efforts to attract more uninsured children will entail important trade-offs between the federal costs of the program (and its political viability) and the number of uninsured children who enroll.