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Children in military families, who receive health insurance through the TRICARE program, face barriers to care such as frequent relocations, unique behavioral health needs, increased complex health care needs, and lack of accessible specialty care. How TRICARE-insured families perceive health care access and quality for their children compared to their civilian peers' perceptions remains unknown. Using data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we found that TRICARE-insured families were less likely to report accessible or responsive care compared to civilian peers, whether commercially or publicly insured or uninsured. Military families whose children had complex health or behavioral health care needs reported worse health care access and quality than similar nonmilitary families. Addressing these gaps may require military leaders to examine barriers to achieving acceptable health care access across military treatment facilities and off-base nonmilitary specialty providers, particularly for children with complex health or behavioral health needs.

Working families have increasingly enrolled their children in Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Program in recent years. Parents' place of employment affects the availability and cost of family health insurance, making it a determinant of pediatric public insurance enrollment. We examined that enrollment in the period 2008-16 in families working full time and earning more than 100 percent of the federal poverty level at three types of employers. Among low-income families (100-199 percent of poverty), children's public health insurance coverage was highest for those with parents employed at small private firms, increasing from 53 percent to 79 percent, while the public insurance coverage rate also increased among children with parents working for large private firms (from 45 percent to 69 percent). Among moderate-income families (200-299 percent of poverty) working at small private firms, public coverage increased from 21 percent to 64 percent. Increases in the number of working families with pediatric public insurance were driven by employees of large private firms. Maintaining high pediatric insurance coverage rates will require policies that recognize the changing role of public insurance for working families as the cost of employer-based coverage grows.

Many families rely on employer-sponsored health insurance for their children. However, the rise in the cost of such insurance has outpaced growth in family income, potentially making public insurance (Medicaid or the Children's Health Insurance Plan) an attractive alternative for affordable dependent coverage. Using data for 2008-13 from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey, we quantified the coverage rates for children from low- or moderate-income households in which a parent was offered employer-sponsored insurance. Among families in which parents were covered by such insurance, the proportion of children without employer-sponsored coverage increased from 22.5 percent in 2008 to 25.0 percent in 2013. The percentage of children with public insurance when a parent was covered by employer-sponsored insurance increased from 12.1 percent in 2008 to 15.2 percent in 2013. This trend was most pronounced for families with incomes of 100-199 percent of the federal poverty level, for whom the share of children with public insurance increased from 22.8 percent to 29.9 percent. Among families with incomes of 200-299 percent of poverty, uninsurance rates for children increased from 6.0 percent to 9.2 percent. These findings suggest a movement away from employer-sponsored insurance and toward public insurance for children in low-income families, and growth in uninsurance among children in moderate-income families.