August 13, 2015
By Jim McLean
Governor Sam Brownback’s decision to divert federal funding away from a health insurance program is drawing sharp criticism from children’s advocates. The divert in funding from CHIP has affected eligibility of Kansas children. Currently there are 54,000 children enrolled in Kansas’ Children Health Insurance Program.
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The additional funding increased the federal government’s share of Kansas CHIP funding from 70 percent to 92 percent. Elisabeth Wright Burak, senior program director at the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute Center for Children and Families, said some states are using similar increases to expand their CHIP programs or fund outreach efforts to increase enrollment.
Kansas is missing an opportunity to do the same, she said. “It is federal money that’s on the table to help families,”
Wright Burak said. “It’s an opportunity to do more for kids than you have been doing.”…
Wright Burak said that doesn’t account for erosions in the eligibility threshold for the Kansas CHIP program due to an indexing provision included in a 2010 law that expanded the program.
“It’s a missed opportunity to use those freed-up funds and put them back in the system and bring the eligibility level to where it was when they passed (the extension),” she said.
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