By Mary Otto
The Children’s Health Insurance Program (formerly known as the State Children’s Health Insurance Program) has enjoyed broad support through much of its history, and state officials have received reassurances from Capitol Hill that funding for the program will continue.
But over the past summer, as Congressional leaders remained divided over many issues, children’s advocates became “increasingly anxious” about the program’s future, Tricia Brooks, a senior fellow at the Georgetown University Center for Children and Families, said in a September commentary in Health Affairs.
Immediate concerns about federal support for the program are urgent, Brooks warned. “Even though state CHIP programs are allowed to carry three-quarters of their unspent 2017 allotment over to 2018, four states will run out of CHIP funds before the end of 2017 and two-thirds of states will exhaust their carryover funds by March 2018,” she wrote.
Longer term worries about the maintenance of the program also are significant and depend upon factors such as whether Congress will approve a “clean extension” of CHIP that preserves enhanced federal matching funds and eligibility levels for the program, Brooks wrote.
For timely information on funding and performance of CHIP, the periodic reports submitted to Congress by the nonpartisan legislative branch agency known as Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) are extremely useful. A MACPAC analysis in January called “Recommendations for the Future of CHIP and Children’s Coverage,” concluded that CHIP had reduced uninsurance among children in families with incomes below 200 percent of the federal poverty level. Also, children with CHIP coverage are more likely to have a more reliable source of care, including dental care, compared with children without insurance.
CHIP programs share common characteristics but also vary from state to state. The National Academy for State Health Policy, an independent academy of state health policymakers, maintains fact sheets with data on each state’s enrollment, participation rates, eligibility levels, benefits, cost-sharing requirements, and other essential characteristics.
The Children’s Dental Health Project’s website offers a fact sheet and other resources about dental benefits under CHIP.
Finally, in a detailed look at the evolution of the CHIP program and concerns about its future, reporter Phil Galewitz of Kaiser Health News produced this piece, “Will Congress Continue Health Care for 9 Million Children?” that ran on National Public Radio and many affiliated stations.
