1. Self-Declaration of Pregnancy Effective September 2003, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services allows states to accept self-declaration of pregnancy. A YES/NO question is now on Med-QUEST's application to eliminate the medical verification barrier for eligible pregnant women. Download the latest version of the form in typeable PDF format in our Library of Forms section. 2. Health Insurance for Children in Mixed-Status Immigrant Families Health insurance is the one exception where immigrant families have made significant gains in the late 1990s thanks to increased public children's health insurance coverage and policies designed to reduce language barriers and legal immigrants' fears. 3. Children's Defense Fund Analysis Shows Percent of Uninsured Children Varies by State An analysis by the Children's Defense Fund of recently released census data for 2002 reveals that the percent of uninsured children in the nation varies widely from state to state. In more than half the states, at least ten percent of children have no health insurance. The percent of uninsured children ranges from more than twenty percent in Texas to less than five percent in Vermont, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin. "We know how to fix this problem through programs that already exist," said Marian Wright Edelman, president of the Children's Defense Fund. "If we would just enroll all eligible, uninsured children in Medicaid and CHIP (Children's Health Insurance Program), we would reduce these numbers and provide more children with the good, quality health care all children deserve in order to have a healthy start in life." The Children's Defense Fund table shows the number and percent of uninsured children by state. Nationwide, about 9.3 million children are uninsured or twelve percent of the 77 million children under age nineteen. National data show that the troubled economy has caused both children and adults to lose employer-based health insurance. However, the loss of health care coverage for children--1.4 million since 2000--was offset by increased health care coverage through two federal health insurance programs, Medicaid and CHIP. Unfortunately, in response to revenue shortfalls, many states are cutting back on Medicaid and CHIP. For example, since 2002, Texas (the state with the highest percentage of uninsured children) has made the decision to cut back on CHIP which is the very program designed to give health insurance to uninsured Texas children. 4. Annual Survey of Child Health Statistics Released The report "Summary Health Statistics for U.S. Children: National Health Interview Survey, 2000" was recently released. The report is one in a set of reports summarizing data from the 2000 National Health Interview Survey, a survey conducted annually by the National Center for Health Statistics, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The report covers statistics for the noninstitutionalized population of children under 18 years of age and is available in PDF format at http://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/series/sr_10/sr10_213.pdf. Some of the statistics in the report include: * Nine million U.S. children under 18 years of age (12%) have ever been diagnosed with asthma. * Children in poor and near poor families were more likely to be uninsured, to have unmet medical need, delayed health care due to cost, no usual place of health care, and high use of emergency room services than children in families that were not poor. * Almost 4 million children aged 2 to 17 years (6%) had unmet dental needs because their families could not afford dental care. 5. Low-Income Children and Health Insurance: Old News and New Realities The State Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was created in 1997 to insure near-poor kids whose family financial levels were slightly too high to qualify for Medicaid. Unlike Medicaid, CHIP is not a guaranteed entitlement; Congress, believing CHIP enrollees would need fewer services than impoverished children in Medicaid, established limits in federal funds to states for the program. New findings show that kids in CHIP have more in common with those in Medicaid than the general population: they're more likely to have special health care needs, and less likely to have insurance coverage without the program. The bottom line, say health policy experts Sara Rosenbaum and Peter Budetti, is that CHIP, like Medicaid, is essential for protecting the health of many American children. Go to http://pediatrics.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/112/6/SE1/e551 for the article.