US CHIP Program Endangered
by Stephen Lendman (stephenlendman.org – Home – Stephen Lendman)
The Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) is administered by the Health and Human Resources Department, providing matched funds to states.
It covers healthcare for around nine million children and hundreds of thousands of pregnant women from low-income families – too high to qualify for Medicaid.
CHIP expired on September 30. Unless renewed, states will run out of funds to continue the program.
On November 3, House members passed the CHAMPION Act, extending CHIP funding through FY 2022 – cutting billions of dollars from the Prevention and Public Health Fund – established for chronic disease prevention.
Senate legislation hasn’t followed so far. According to health policy analyst David Blumenthal, brinksmanship over the bill’s passage “br(oke) the history of bipartisanship” in Congress for the CHIP program.
Without responsible congressional action, states will run out of funds for the program in a few months, some by yearend.
The HHS Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), administering the program, notified states earlier this month of options if CHIP funding isn’t renewed.
Many enrollees would be shifted to Medicaid. About four million are in states not linked to the program, at risk of losing coverage altogether.
Without congressional action, enrollees in over a dozen states will lose coverage – entirely in New York, Texas and other states, only a portion of enrollees in others.
Without federal funding, CHIP won’t likely survive. About $15 billion is needed to continue federal funding to states.
Post-9/11 alone, Congress appropriated trillions of dollars for militarism and warmaking, taking lives, not saving them, raping and destroying countries, not respecting their sovereignty, along with lavish handouts to corporate predators – at the expense of social justice, America’s most vulnerable harmed to benefit its privileged class.
Necons infesting Washington made America increasingly resemble Guatemala, a plutocracy run by bipartisan criminals, a Machiavellian conspiracy against peace, equity and justice, making mafia dons look like petty thieves.
Ordinary people are exploited and abused, bearing the burden of high unemployment, much higher underemployment, impoverishment and loss of fundamental rights.
Inside the bubble it’s paradise. America’s privileged class never had things better. Outside it’s increasingly dystopian hell.
America is the world’s richest nation. Among all developed ones, it’s the most inequitable. It’s by far the most ruthless and dangerous.
CHIP began in 1997. Will it end under Trump and a GOP-controlled Congress in 2017?
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