Kansas children have been steadily losing health insurance since the end of the pandemic. But last year, those losses increased even more sharply.
The numbers are alarming for children's health advocates, who are scrambling to respond. The Kansas Health Institute held a conference last week to review the numbers and invited experts to offer solutions.
Anne Dwyer, associate research professor at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy, said the national uninsured rate for children has held steady, rising slightly from 6% in 2024 to 6.1% in 2025. It’s still the highest uninsured rate for children in a decade.
“The national warning lights for children's health coverage are flashing,” Dwyer said. “Accelerated enrollment losses and administrative hurdles jeopardize the progress the country has made on child uninsurance rates over decades.”
From 2022 to 2024, Kansas saw one of the largest percentage increases in the nation for uninsured children.
And data from the U.S. Census Bureau says that in 2025, the rate of uninsured children in Kansas rose significantly, from 7% to 8.5%. That puts the state among the top five states in the nation for uninsured children.
Advocates said many children in the state are eligible for health insurance but are losing coverage for a variety of reasons. One of the main complications is what they call the unwinding of continuous coverage after the pandemic. During COVID-19, families were automatically renewed for health insurance assistance as the nation faced a medical emergency.
Sonder Crane, a Manhattan physician and president of the Kansas chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, said the unwinding has created barriers and affected insurance rates among the state’s children.
Crane said ending continuous coverage and requiring families to re-enroll has created confusion. Families have missed paperwork or found it hard to navigate the system. Call centers are understaffed and overwhelmed, so it’s hard for families to find help.
“People had either forgotten about renewal, or never had to do that before if they had young enough children,” Crane said. “I think it's one of those things where it was so new and different, or so complicated, that we lost a lot of families to getting re-enrolled.”
The impact of the declining insurance rates among children is not evenly distributed. Several groups in Kansas have lost coverage at a faster rate than the state’s average.
Hispanic groups saw the largest increase in children without health insurance. Advocates said Hispanic populations in Kansas have historically seen a higher rate of uninsurance, driven by a mix of barriers and disparities.
Erica Andrade, president and CEO of El Centro, works with the Hispanic community in Kansas City. She said a common misconception is that these children are undocumented.
“That's not the fact — these are documented children,” Andrade said. “Some of them might be from mixed-status families, some might not be. But at the end of the day, it's this fear of what enrolling means and assumptions that are made.”
The difficulty of the process, length of applications and trouble getting help in a native language all compound the barriers to coverage among Hispanic families, Andrade said. But most of all, the current atmosphere of fear around immigration status is affecting insurance rates.
Hispanic families are afraid of what applying or re-applying for insurance assistance might mean for their status in the country, Andrade said. They are doing everything they can to avoid contact with the government, even if it means their children lose health insurance.
“We serve a lot of mixed-status households,” Andrade said. “The fear, the public messaging, and just the administration that we find ourselves in is affecting re-enrollments. People are actually coming in to decline, and actually withdrawing from coverage, even though they are perfectly eligible.”
Kansas also saw significant increases in the uninsured rate for children under 6 years old compared to older children.
Younger children without insurance increased by 94.6% – rising from 3.7% to 7.2% between 2022 and 2024. In comparison, children ages 6 to 18 experienced a much smaller increase of 20.7% over the same period.
Early childhood is a critical development window, requiring up to 15 recommended well-child visits by age 6. Gaps in insurance during these foundational years can delay vital developmental screenings and early intervention.
Andrade said kids who are healthy do better in school and earn more as adults. Either going without this care, or delaying it, means children are likely missing opportunities for intervention and changing the trajectory of their life.
Crane said things like vaccines and health screenings are basic preventative medicine that everyone should have access to. If diseases aren’t caught early, they can be a burden to a family later on.
“I think the downstream effects from a financial standpoint is something I've seen my entire life as a pediatrician,” Crane said. “If you don't have the prevention, you're going to pay a lot more. If children come into my office already sick, the probability of that happening is pretty high.”
State health advocates said there are several solutions to getting more children enrolled for health care. These include instituting automatic renewals for health insurance.
Heather Braum, senior policy advisor for Kansas Action for Children, said funding is also needed for more navigators, especially non-English speaking ones, to guide families through the application and renewal process.
In addition, applications for food and health insurance assistance could be combined and streamlined, Braum said. Families should only have to fill out one set of paperwork for assistance programs.
“I think the situation with kids’ insurance is ripe for a lot of simplification,” Braum said. “There’s a lot of work to make life easier for our families to have their kids be able to get the health insurance coverage they need, but more importantly, get the healthcare that they need, when they need it, without going into debt.”
Roger Nomer reports from the Wichita area for the Kansas News Service. You can email him at nomer@kmuw.org.
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