Issue Position: Children's Health

Issue Position

Issue Position: Children's Health
Overview

The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) establishes a funding mechanism to help states provide health care coverage to low-income children. The legislation that established SCHIP expired earlier this year. Congress passed two bills reauthorizing and enhancing SCHIP to extend coverage to roughly four million children who are elegible for the program, but who are not yet enrolled, but President Bush has now vetoed both of them. Without the votes to override the President's vetoes, Congress passed an extension of the program as it is now through March of 2009.

Fast Facts and Goals
· About 6.6 million low-income children are currently enrolled in SCHIP. Approximately 6 million more kids qualify for SCHIP, but cannot enroll due to insufficient federal funding;

· SCHIP provides essential funding for the State of Colorado to reach the 127,000 children in families with incomes between 100% and 200% of the Federal Poverty Level who are currently uninsured;

· Approximately 70,000 children from families under 200% of the Federal Poverty Level were enrolled in Colorado's SCHIP program at some point last year (not all these kids were enrolled for the entire year, on average there were 50,000 enrolled each month);

· Approximately 2,600 very-low income adults (under $27,000), including 1,300 pregnant women, were covered under Colorado's SCHIP program last year;

· It is important not to extend the Medicaid citizenship documentation requirements to SCHIP, as 15,000 children in Colorado alone were dropped from the Medicaid program last year;

· Colorado's plans to cover all children in the state count on being able to enroll additional children in CHP+ (the Colorado SCHIP program);

· In 2006, Colorado received approximately $60 million in federal SCHIP funding on top of over $32 million provided by the State;

· Nearly 180,000 children in Colorado are uninsured, or 14% of Colorado's children.

Source