At one point or another, nearly everyone has lived through the experience of seeing a loved one cope with sickness or a serious injury. You only have to go through that experience once to know just how much it means to have health insurance. Yet more than a quarter of a million children in Illinois do not have health insurance.

That means they may not be able to see a doctor or get medicine when they need to. When they do get medical care, it’s often in the emergency room, after a small problem has grown into a big problem. That’s wrong. Every child should be able to get medical care when they need it, before it becomes an emergency.

That’s why the Kids Medical insurance program was created, to make healthcare a reality for hundreds of thousands of families across the state. Illinois is the first state in the nation to provide affordable, comprehensive health insurance for every child. Of the 250,000 children in Illinois without health insurance, more than half come from working and middle class families who earn too much to qualify for state programs like KidCare, but not enough to afford private health insurance.

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