Media Coverage
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Nightmare before Christmas: 32,000 local children face losing health insurance
Star-Telegram By: Bud Kennedy More than 32,000 of our children are about to get bad news for Christmas. Along with greeting cards and gifts sent by relatives, they’ll find a letter in the mailbox Dec. 22 saying Texas and the U.S. have canceled their health coverage. … “It’s terrible news for any parent to get in December — that…
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Pennsylvania’s Children’s Health Insurance Program turns 25 this week, but it faces financial troubles
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette By: Kate Giammarise Pennsylvania’s Children’s Health Insurance Program will mark a major milestone on Saturday — its 25th anniversary. … “I have yet to meet a state or federal lawmaker who doesn’t think CHIP is a program that works, who doesn’t think CHIP is a program worthy of public funds and who doesn’t…
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Texas eager to avoid telling nearly a half-million kids — right before Christmas — that they’ve lost health coverage
Dallas Morning News By: Jackie Wang Gov. Greg Abbott’s administration is trying to avoid mailing health insurance cancellation notices to nearly half a million children three days before Christmas. … But there are many concerns about moving families from CHIP to healthcare.gov, according to Adriana Kohler, senior health policy associate for the advocacy group Texans…
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Editorial: The high cost of Congress’ dithering
The Virginian-Pilot By: Editorial Team Families of more than 66,000 children in Virginia will receive a letter soon telling them that their insurance coverage could end by late January — less than 10 weeks from now. That’s a scary prospect heading into the holidays and the new year. But the notice is necessary because Congress…
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States pick up cost as Congress delays reauthorizing kids health plan
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. … That the health insurance program, which…
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Arizona Puts Contingency Plan In Place to Fund Kids Health Care Program
KJZZ 91.5 By: Mark Brodie Funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, ran out at the end of September, and Congress has not yet acted to re-authorize it. … For a look at how this issue is affecting states across the country, I’m joined by Joan Alker, executive director of the Georgetown University…
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Alex Azar faces the Senate: What to expect at his hearing today
Politico By: Dan Diamond President Donald Trump’s pick to run HHS faces his first Senate confirmation hearing today. Azar will be in front of the HELP Committee starting at 9:30 a.m. … PULSE surveyed some of health care’s biggest thinkers for questions that are top of mind or are being overlooked. … Georgetown’s Joan Alker:…
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Millions of kids may lose health insurance over missed deadline by Congress
NBC News By: Elizabeth Chuck The diagnosis was dire: Roland Williams, a St. Louis boy with a megawatt smile and a penchant for painting, had an extremely rare form of lung cancer, oncologists told his mother in May 2016. … “CHIP and Medicaid have worked together, particularly over the past decade, to reduce the number…
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As Congress Stalls on Children’s Health Insurance, States Warn of Cuts
Governing By: Mattie Quinn The last time the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) needed to be reauthorized was back in 2015. That year, Congress took until April to approve the funding. It was the closest Congress had ever come to the program’s reauthorization deadline. … “It’s fundamentally robbing Peter to pay Paul and just goes…
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Here’s how Medicaid became the backstop of America’s ailing health care system
Dallas News By: Phil Galewitz When high levels of lead were discovered in the public water system in Flint, Mich., in 2015, Medicaid stepped in to help thousands of children get tested for poisoning and receive care. When disabled children need to get to doctors’ appointments — either across town or hundreds of miles away…
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Pennsylvania wrestles with uncertainty over children’s health insurance funding
WHYY By: Elana Gordon For more than two decades, The Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, has provided health coverage to millions of kids nationwide. But lawmakers have yet to reauthorize it, and that’s putting states whose funding expires soon in a bind. In Pennsylvania, that could jeopardize health care for upwards of 150,000 kids…
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How Medicaid became the most important battleground in American health care
Vox By: Dylan Scott On Tuesday, the state’s voters approved expanding Medicaid to 70,000 of their poorest residents, circumventing the archconservative governor who has blocked the expansion five times in the past four years. “Maine people have supported this for years,” Ann Woloson, who worked in support of the ballot initiative, told me the day before the…
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WV CHIP to shut down in February unless Congress allocates funds
Charleston Gazette-Mail By: Erin Beck The board of directors for the West Virginia Children’s Health Insurance Program voted Wednesday to shut down the CHIP program on Feb. 28, if Congress doesn’t allocate funding to the program soon. … Tricia Brooks, a senior fellow at the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, said she worries…
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Dangerous Medicaid waivers likely to be approved under Trump administration
ThinkProgress By: Amanda Michelle Gomez The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a division within the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), released new criteria Tuesday outlining how it will judge state applications that look to innovate the 1965 insurance program. Notably omitted from the newly unveiled plan: “expanding eligibility.” Veering away from the Obama…
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The CHIP slip — Congress must fund program that insures children’s health
The Anniston Star The bipartisan creation of the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) 20 years ago seems like a initiative from another universe. … “It’s very discouraging that Congress has reached this level of dysfunction and has so much difficulty extending a bipartisan program that has been so successful,” Joan C. Alker, the executive director…
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Healthcare for 200,000 Ohio children waits for funding, caught in political web
The Plain Dealer By: Ginger Christ Federal funding for a program that provides health insurance coverage to roughly 200,000 children in Ohio and 9 million across the U.S. expired more than a month ago, and Congress still hasn’t enacted legislation to restore funding. … Children are eligible for the program if their families do not…
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Trump’s Cuts To Insurance Companies Impacts Arkansans
UA Little Rock Public Radio By: David Monteith President Trump is ending some federal insurance subsidies for people covered under the Affordable Care Act. KUAR’s David Monteith spoke with Marquita Little, Health Policy Director for Arkansas Advocates for Children and Families, about what the cuts will mean for Arkansans’ access to healthcare. … Interview with…
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Unless Congress Acts, Utah Could Lose CHIP Program by Year’s End
Standard-Examiner By: Cathy McKitrick Speaking at a Newsmaker Breakfast on health care in Salt Lake City Wednesday, Paul Edwards — Gov. Gary Herbert’s deputy chief of staff over Communications and Policy — described the funding’s recent lapse as a huge concern. … In late August, Jessie Mandle, senior health policy analyst for Voices for Utah…
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Kids and Families Can’t Afford to Wait for CHIP to be Renewed
The Salt Lake Tribune By: Kenneth Limb, Earl R. Anderson, Jessie Mandle The Salt Lake Tribune: Commentary: Kids and families can’t afford to wait for CHIP to be renewed Federal funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, has expired. If Congress doesn’t act soon to renew CHIP funding, Utah’s CHIP program will be…
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Double-digit Increases OK’d for Arkansas’ Health Plans After Subsidy Paid to Insurers Ends
Arkansas Online By: Andy Davis In response to President Donald Trump’s decision to end a subsidy for health insurance companies, Arkansas Insurance Commissioner Allen Kerr on Friday approved double-digit rate increases for the plans that will be offered on the state’s insurance exchange next year. … In light of the potential increase in the cost…