Golden State’s health-coverage woes

More than a million Californians lost their employer-based health coverage between 2009 and 2011, a new study finds.

The UCLA Center for Health Policy Research found that the number of state residents with employer-based coverage decreased from 17.3 million in 2009 to 16.1 million in 2011, or from 56.4 percent to 49.7 percent of residents, according to the Los Angeles Times. Additionally, the percentage of Californians enrolled in state-supported “safety-net” programs such as Medi-Cal increased from 15.7 to 19.1 in the same time period.

The statistics come on the heels of a separate report conducted by the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute’s Center for Children and Families, finding California to have the second-highest number of uninsured children in the nation with 745,000, or about 8 percent of the state’s kids. Only Texas has a higher number of uninsured children, with 916,000.