Vox

By: Dylan Scott

The Children’s Health Insurance Program is enduring an unprecedented crisis: More than 100 ago, funding for a program that covers 9 million kids technically expired. Republicans in Congress haven’t rushed to extend it long-term — not until they could get something in return.

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“The inexcusable delays in extending CHIP … have brought us to a moment now when the CHIP debate no longer has anything to do with CHIP,” Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families, told me via email. “The policy is long settled, and there are no offsets needed — CHIP has merely become a bargaining chip. This is a very sad state of affairs.”

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