Their CHIPs Are Down
January 24th, 2007 at 3:11 pm
Those whiny poor kids are at it again–complaining about their lack of health care. There’s just no pleasing some folks (next they’ll want an adequate education too). At any rate, Democrats in the Texas House launched a new effort today to restore cuts to the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP).
A sizeable portion of the Democratic caucus in the House convened a late-morning press conference to announce that 61 Democrats, led by Garnet Coleman (D-Houston) and Elliott Naishtat (D-Austin), have all filed or co-sponsored bills to restore CHIP.
By way of background: The Legislature cut CHIP and Medicaid in 2003–not directly, mind you, but through insidious bureaucratic trap doors designed to winnow families off public health insurance. For instance, the Lege forced families to reenroll every six months instead of annually, wait 90 days before coverage started, and pass “asset tests” to ensure no one had too nice a car. The idea was to cut kids off CHIP and Medicaid through attrition and save money. The plan worked too well: More than 200,000 kids have lost coverage under CHIP since September 2003, when the changes went into effect. Another 80,000 kids were booted off Medicaid.
As Coleman pointed out today, money isn’t the problem. The state has $394 million in unspent CHIP funds just sitting around (full restoration of CHIP and Medicaid would cost about $150 million a year). We got the cash. Problem is, we could throw a gazillion dollars at CHIP and still not boost enrollment. That’s simply because the bureaucratic traps doors prevent families from remaining on the program. “You could appropriate the $150 million now, but if you don’t repeal the statutory barriers, the number of children in CHIP will remain the same,” Coleman said.
So Coleman, Naishtat and Co. have filed bills to eliminate the six-month eligibilty, the waiting period and all the rest. It’s worth remembering that CHIP is a nice deal for the state: the Feds pay for two-thirds of the program, which means Texas has forfeited $893 million in federal matching funds since 2003 that have gone instead to other states.
Notably, though some Republicans have expressed interest in restoring CHIP, no Rs were present at the press conference this morning.
March 1st, 2007 at 3:37 pm
[…] CHIP day at the Capitol — a high point in the four-year effort to undue the 2003 cuts to the Children’s Health Insurance Program. Rep. Garnet Coleman and the Children’s […]
April 3rd, 2007 at 6:54 pm
[…] 126-16. HB 109 makes up for some of the damage done by the Legislature in 2003, when Republicans slashed the program. That bit of nastiness cost some Republicans their jobs in recent […]