Sen. Sherrod Brown, standing up for the children.
The Children's Health Insurance Program is
threatened by a funding glitch created by a poorly written provision of Obamacare. But more so, it's threatened by Republicans who see in this funding glitch another hostage-taking opportunity, and
intend to exploit it.
Congressional Republicans released a draft bill Tuesday that would avert a funding cutoff for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and the loss of coverage for some two million children.
What House and Senate Republicans called a "discussion draft" would extend funding past September but for an undecided period of time and with a number of changes that diverge from Democratic priorities and concern advocates for low-income children. It sets the stage for negotiations between the two parties, neither of which want to face the political ramifications of letting children go uninsured and throwing state budgets into turmoil.[…]
Notably, the bill also prohibits coverage for children above 300 percent of the federal poverty line and scales it back for those at or above 250 percent. Seventeen states cover children with family incomes of at least 300 percent of the federal poverty line, while 24 states cover them at 250 percent, according to the Georgetown Center for Children and Families. But according to the bill's summary, "When [CHIP] was created with bipartisan support in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, [it] was intended to provide health insurance coverage for low-income children in families with incomes at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level."
Some of the other changes include extending special funding for 11 states that expanded Medicaid to cover more children before CHIP passed in 1997, but restricting all of them to the same 250 percent poverty level cap, a new restriction; allowing states to extend the waiting period for coverage to up to 12 months, from 90 days; and end an Obamacare provision that requires states to move children between 100 percent of the federal poverty line and 133 percent from CHIP to Medicaid, which would give states more flexibility to limit coverage to those children. Because it's all about allowing states the maximum flexibility to keep kids from getting health care.
This is a really similar situation to their hostage-taking on Social Security Disability funding—they see an opportunity to do damage and seize it, trying to force Democrats into negotiating changes that would otherwise be unacceptable under the threat that the program could just wither away without action. For his part, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is having none of it. He's introduced a straightforward, four-year funding reauthorization bill and is calling this Republican salvo a "non-starter."