House Subcommittee Holds Hearing on the Future of CHIP, Releases Governors’ Letters

It has been a while since I witnessed a Congressional hearing on health care that was not contentious. Courtesy and bipartisanship were on full display at the House Energy and Commerce Health Subcommittee this week on the future of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). That’s not to say that renewing CHIP funding will be a cakewalk, but there appeared to be a genuine interest among committee members to understand CHIP and how it works with Medicaid and health insurance marketplaces to connect children with affordable coverage. The subcommittee also selected an informative panel of witnesses who had all done their homework on CHIP, including:

• Evelyne Baumrucker
, Health Care Financing Analyst, 
Congressional Research Service (CRS)
 Testimony
• Alison Mitchell, 
Health Care Financing Analyst
, Congressional Research Service (CRS)
 Testimony
• Carolyn Yocom
, Director, Health Care
, U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) 
Testimony
• Anne Schwartz, PhD
, Executive Director
, Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission
 Testimony

We will have more to say about many of the topics raised at the hearing in future blog posts, but here are some testimony highlights:

Children would lose health coverage if CHIP is not extended

Carolyn Yocom cited GAO’s report that 2 million kids would be caught in the family glitch without CHIP. Anne Schwartz of MACPAC said more than half of all states would exhaust their remaining CHIP dollars within two months of the end of the fiscal year. She predicted that uninsurance would rise, and the coverage children would be moved to would be less adequate and more costly.

Timing

Many governors’ letters supported getting CHIP extended as quickly as possible, and many subcommittee members stressed that point saying that states needed certainty of CHIP funding so they could plan accordingly and families needed the peace of mind of knowing their childrens’ health coverage was not in jeopardy.

Benefits and cost differences between CHIP and marketplace plans

Of course this question prompted a lengthy discussion on the family glitch and it appeared that most in the room agreed that it was unfair to determine premium tax credit eligibility based on the cost for individual employer-offered coverage instead of based on the higher cost families face for full family coverage. (Read here for more on the family glitch). While the family glitch is the most glaring problem for low or moderate-income families losing CHIP coverage, there are other major concerns as well. Yocum pointed out that coverage under benchmark plans is not as robust as CHIP coverage. (We know from CCF’s Arizona report and the recent Wakely analysis in 35 states that families would be charged more—in many cases much much more— for less comprehensive coverage in marketplace plans.) Both Yocum and Schwartz spoke to the fact that families would likely pay much more in marketplace plans compared to CHIP.

BREAKING NEWS: Governors’ letters released!!!

While many of the takeaways from the hearing were not news to Say Ahhh! readers, there was one very exciting development. The House Energy and Commerce and Senate Finance Committees released 39 governors’ responses to last summer’s Congressional inquiry on the future of CHIP.  In short, governors overwhelmingly support CHIP and want the program extended. (CCF’s Sophia Duong put in overtime reading all 39 and put together a summary of governors’ responses. The Congressional summary and letters themselves are all posted here.  Much more to say on those in a blog post next week!)

Still want more? If you have two hours to spare, you can watch a recording of the full hearing.  Meanwhile,  you can read a few of my live tweets from the proceedings below.

 

 

All in all, a good discussion about the future of CHIP but it seems the conversation will continue a while longer. A spokesperson for Chairman Pitts said after the hearing that it was unlikely that CHIP would be renewed during the lame-duck session. Looks like we’ll have more time—but hopefully not too much more  — to ponder the future of CHIP.

Elisabeth Wright Burak is a Senior Fellow at the Georgetown University McCourt School of Public Policy’s Center for Children and Families.

Latest