While many of us were eagerly watching the House CHIP hearing last week, the House Energy and Commerce and Senate Finance Committees released the full set of governors responses to the summer Congressional inquiry on CHIP. Naturally, we were eager to see what they had to say! We read through the 39 letters intently to see where they stood on CHIP’s future, summarized here. (Note that they had more to say on the details and successes of their CHIP programs, which we didn’t fully capture.) Some of our takeaways:

Governors overwhelmingly support CHIP and want funding extended soon. Thirty-eight letters praised CHIP, with 35 governors explicitly requested an extension of funding to sustain children’s coverage in their states. Seventeen highlighted the need for extension to before its September expiration, with 13 of those specifying the need for action before or during the first quarter of 2015. This makes sense, since states need adequate time to plan and adopt their 2016 budgets, not to mention enough lead-time to notify families if they may lose their coverage. Alabama Governor Robert Bentley probably said this best:

Congress should extend CHIP funding for four years to provide health care for many of our children. I ask that Congress act soon. We have started budgeting for the 2016 fiscal year, and CHIP’s funding uncertainty complicates that task. The uncertainty of CHIP funding is also stressful for parents trying to make sure their children have health insurance.   

More than half of the respondents saw at least a four-year extension as necessary. Twenty-four governors expressed a desire for a four-year extension of funding, which was backed up by the concern raised in a number of letters that the marketplaces are not yet ready for children covered through CHIP today because they offer less comprehensive care at a higher cost.

Specific policy recommendations suggest issues that could emerge in the upcoming CHIP debate. Of course in addition to WHY and WHEN of a CHIP funding extension, we were interested in what governors had to say about the HOW: Policy changes or extensions that they see as important could very well resurface on the Hill. Our summary lists the many specific recommendations governors suggested, but here are a few that caught our attention.

• Keep or reinstate CHIPRA policies that have or will soon expire: reinstate performance bonuses (6 states), support CHIPRA quality provisions/quality measures (6 states), and extend express lane eligibility (ELE) (3 states).

• Reconsider the ACA’s children’s coverage requirements: oppose transfer of school-aged “stairstep” kids to Medicaid (4 states), modify or eliminate the maintenance of effort (MOE) requirement (4 states).

Some of these would be wise policy changes; others could make kids worse off even if CHIP funding were to be extended. But today, I remain optimistic that last week’s informative CHIP hearing and the overwhelming, bipartisan support from governors will lead to swift action on CHIP early next year.

Want more on which governors said what? In addition to ours, you can check out the committee summary and the individual letters here and here. First Focus also has a summary up here.