Dayton Daily News
By: Jessica Wehrman
The federal program that provides health insurance to nearly 9 million low income children — including 219,000 in Ohio — expired two months ago, and states are beginning to panic that they’ll have to cut services to families beginning early next year.
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That the health insurance program, which has traditionally had overwhelming bipartisan support, faced troubles this year is surprising to Joan Alker, executive director of the Center on Children and Families at Georgetown University. She said she worries about the families who will receive notification that Congress hasn’t acted. Those families, she said, might not sign up their children even if it is restored. In states that run the program through the Medicaid program, a financial hit is inevitable. States “are walking such a fine line,” she said. “They don’t want to alarm families, but they can’t wait forever because they have to run a program…a lot of states are really on the edge right now.”
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