July 22, 2015
By Maureen Groppe,
WASHINGTON — The federal government has agreed to pay for 99.62 percent of the cost of Indiana’s Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) over the next two years. Indiana has one of the lowest CHIP enrollment rates among states, so some advocacy groups had hope the increased funding would go towards efforts to enroll more children in CHIP, but instead it will be used to make up for decline in funding from the a 1998 agreement between states and major tobacco companies.
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Participation rates in CHIP and Medicaid have gone up in recent years, but Indiana’s 84.2 percent rate in 2013 was still seventh-lowest among states, according to Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. And Indiana was the only Midwestern state where the share of children without health insurance (8.2 percent) was higher than the national rate (7.1 percent) in 2013.
Elizabeth Wright Burak, senior program director at Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, said Indiana is not among the majority of states that allow a child, once enrolled in CHIP, to stay covered for 12 months regardless of the household’s income fluctuations. In addition, Indiana requires children to be uninsured for 90 days before become eligible.
“Indiana could certainly make strides if they got rid of their waiting period,” she said.
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