PROVIDENCE — Between 2001 and 2005, the median income of Rhode Island families with health-insurance coverage rose 1 percent, while the cost of the premiums jumped 35 percent, according to Rhode Island Kids Count.

The financial squeeze shown by those numbers creates a context for a new Kids Count report on public and private health insurance for children and families in Rhode Island.

The report will figure in a Kids Count Roundtable event today to call attention to issues in family health insurance at a time when the state’s RIte Care program, for low-income people and their children, faces a budget crunch in the General Assembly.

The report urges the state to maintain eligibility levels and benefits in RIte Care and take steps to improve affordability of and access to health care, saying RIte Care has proven to be cost-effective.

The General Assembly has before it a proposal for the next fiscal year that would cut 7,400 low-income parents from the RIte Care rolls, although their children would continue to be covered.

At the same time, narrowing eligibility in RIte Care would also result in a 50-percent drop in enrollment in RIte Share, a sister program for the working poor in which the state pays the employee’s share of employer-sponsored health insurance, according to Kids Count.

Other proposed changes would raise premiums and other out-of-pocket costs paid by some of the low-income families who are enrolled.

The next budget will not reduce the number of eligible children — something that was applauded yesterday by Kids Count’s executive director, Elizabeth Burke-Bryant.

But the recently enacted supplemental budget for the current fiscal year cut 2,800 immigrant children who had been “grandfathered” on the RIte Care rolls since last year, when the state began excluding illegal immigrants from enrollment.

Burke-Bryant said the proposal to restrict eligibility for parents was also to have taken effect in the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, but the General Assembly put off the decision in the hope of finding a better solution to the budget problem.

Studies have shown that children are more likely to get regular preventive care if their parents are also covered, she said.

The Roundtable, at 10:30 a.m. at the Kids Count offices in Union Station, will focus on the “success story” of health insurance for children in Rhode Island, with 94 percent of children receiving some sort of coverage, Burke-Bryant said.

Among the states, she said, Rhode Island ranks 10th-highest in terms of the percentage of children with health-insurance coverage. More than 62 percent are covered through their parents’ employers, and the remaining 30 percent are enrolled in RIte Care, she said.

RIte Care participants account for 70 percent of Rhode Islanders receiving assistance through the federal-state Medicaid program, she said. But RIte Care participants are responsible for only 21 percent of the costs.

RIte Care provides comprehensive health care to children up to age 19 in families earning a maximum of 250 percent of the federal poverty level. Pregnant women are also covered at this income level.

Parents are eligible for coverage as long as they earn no more than 185 percent of the federal poverty level. The change before the General Assembly would lower the income ceiling for eligibility to 133 percent of the federal poverty level.

Burke-Bryant described RIte Care as a “well-managed, cost-effective” program that is “achieving very positive health outcomes.”

With RIte care subscribers receiving regular prenatal care, childhood immunizations, and health screenings, there are “fewer preventable hospitalizations for adults and children,” Burke-Bryant said.

Just one asthma patient who does not receive regular care in a doctor’s office can end up costing thousands of dollars in the emergency room, Burke-Bryant said.

The proposal to narrow eligibility would save an estimated $29.5 million in Medicaid funds in the next budget — $12.8 million in state revenue and $16.7 million in federal funds, according to Kids Count.

But Kids Count maintains that costs would escalate in the long run.

gmacris@projo.com