SEATTLE, WA – Sunday in Seattle, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), families and area health care advocates called the Senate Finance Committee’s bi-partisan plan to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) a big victory for Washington state and the nation. The bill, which cleared the committee by a vote of 17-4, is now headed to the Senate floor, but President Bush has already announced he’ll veto it if it passes Congress. 

 

Through her new seat on the Senate Finance Committee, Cantwell got full committee approval to nearly triple the federal money Washington will get for qualified low-income kids and nearly quadruple money for these kids by 2012. Thanks to Cantwell’s efforts, for the first time since CHIP was created, Washington will have full access to its fair share of the program and get health care to more kids. 

 

“We’ve cleared the first hurdle in the battle to make sure that every child in America has access to health care, but the president’s veto threat puts this entire plan at risk,” said Cantwell. “Health insurance premiums are rising more than twice as fast as family wages. CHIP is a real answer for families working hard to give their kids the right start in life. More than 6 million kids depend on this program for basic health care and more than 3 million additional kids will be helped if this bill passes. These kids deserve to be the focus of our debate and the focus of our policy making. We can do better for all our kids by passing this bill quickly through Congress and showing the president that this Congress is going to get health care to more kids with or without him. It’s the right thing to do.”

“Children in Washington are one step closer to healthier childhoods because of the actions of the U.S. Congress last week,” said Paola Maranan, Executive Director, Children’s Alliance. “We applaud Senator Cantwell and our entire Congressional delegation for standing up for children by ensuring that Washington gets our fair share of federal support for children's health. For ten long years, we've been penalized by the federal government for our early efforts to extend health coverage to children. This year, we call upon Congress and the President to reauthorize the State Children's Health Insurance Program and end the penalty on kids in Washington.”

For years, Cantwell has worked to prevent states from being punished for their own efforts to expand coverage to more children prior to the enactment of CHIP, and her efforts have now paid off in the Senate Finance Committee’s bill now headed to the Senate floor.

"As the health care home to nearly half of Washington’s uninsured children, the community health clinics applaud Cantwell's efforts to cover more kids,” said Hugh Ewart, Community Health Network of Washington.

 

CHIP is a federal program that helps states cover uninsured low-income children from families with incomes above Medicaid eligibility levels. But the rules put in place when CHIP was created in 1997 needlessly punish states that used efficiency and innovation to get health care access to even more needy kids. The program was originally designed to cover children from families living on 250 percent of the poverty level or less, but would only enroll those who were not already eligible for health coverage on another program at the time of CHIP’s enactment.

 

By 1997, Washington state was covering children from families at up to 200 percent of the poverty level with Medicaid dollars, and so CHIP’s rules have prevented Washington from using its allocation to cover the thousands of remaining uninsured low-income children who would have otherwise been eligible. Because Washington did the right thing and went ahead of the federal government to help more children get access to health care, the state has been forced to hand back more than $200 million to the federal government over the past 10 years.

 

In 2002, Cantwell worked with the Senate Finance Committee to allow Washington to use a portion of its allocation to cover children from Medicaid-eligible families living at or below 200 percent of the poverty level. Before this fix, Washington was only able to use a small portion of its CHIP funds. Thanks to that fix, Washington has been able to use an additional $47.3 million in CHIP funds, but the state has still been forced to return millions.

 

The Senate Finance Committee’s bi-partisan plan heads to the Senate floor for a vote in the coming weeks. The House is still writing their package.

 

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