DeLauro Statement on Bush Administration's new SCHIP Standards

Press Release

DeLauro Statement on Bush Administration's new SCHIP Standards

Congresswoman Rosa L. DeLauro (Conn.-3) issued the following statement on the announcement from the Bush Administration of new standards for the Children's Health Insurance Program that will effectively limit children's access to the program.

"It is unconscionable that with this nation facing a health care crisis - 46 million Americans, 9 million of them children, are without health insurance - that President Bush would unilaterally limit access to health care for our children. This penalizes children for the Bush Administration's six-years of fiscal mismanagement.

"While states work to expand access to the highly regarded State Children's Health Insurance Program, ensuring children have access to preventive care and doctor's visits, the Bush Administration wants to tie their hands, issuing new, limiting standards that will effectively cover fewer children and roll back the successes. This program is perhaps the best social policy success story of the last decade. When it began in 1997 - President Clinton said SCHIP would cover 5 million children. Today we have covered 6 million nationwide.

"In limiting eligibility, the Administration ignores the reality of the health care crisis in this country and the trend for rising uninsured rates for moderate and middle income earners and their families. These new policies even go so far as to require a child to be without health insurance for a one-year period before being eligible to participate in the Children's Health Insurance Program. Between 2001 and 2005 moderate income families* saw a 13 percent increase in the number of Americans who were uninsured for at least part of the past year and middle income families* saw a five percent increase, according to the Commonwealth Fund."

"This is about recognizing and embracing our nation's most serious and constant challenge - a challenge that the federal government has the ability, the capacity, the resources, and the moral obligation to help us meet. We all have a stake and an obligation in solving this crisis. No one - not even the president - should be able to undermine the great promise of a healthy future for our kids.

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