Governing

By: Mattie Quinn

Congress missed the Sept. 30 deadline to reauthorize funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), sending states that rely on that money scrambling to figure out how to pay for it.

U.S. Sens. Orrin Hatch and Ron Wyden introduced a bipartisan bill last month that would have extended funding for five years, but it never even got a vote. Health policy experts, however, are cautiously optimistic that Congress will pass the bill in the next few weeks, after the initial deadline has passed.

…

“Most states have already passed their budgets, and the vast majority of them expected it to be reauthorized. Congress is really putting states in a bind right now,” says Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown Center for Children and Families.

If states are forced to unenroll some children, it’ll be “a very complicated” process of deciding who gets cut off, says Alker. Children in states that don’t fully fund CHIP with Medicaid dollars are most at risk of losing insurance, she says.

The number of uninsured kids is at a record low, with 95.5 percent of children under the age of 18 now covered by some form of health insurance, according to the Georgetown Center for Children and Families.

“This is a historic bipartisan accomplishment, and it’s something we should be proud of,” says Akler. “Inaction by Congress is going to reverse our progress.”

…

Read more here.