Opinion: Bush’s storm is sinking SCHIP
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With the Dec. 14 cutoff for temporary funding looming, it’s time to take another look at what’s happening to the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, since President Bush refuses to sign Congress’ reauthorization bills. Remember those worst-case scenarios? Looks like they’re close to becoming reality.
According to Congressional Quarterly:
The Congressional Research Service reported Oct. 25 that 21 states face combined shortfalls of $1.6 billion in their children’s health insurance programs this year. The first of those states will run out of money in March.
From the San Francisco Chronicle:
Unless there’s an infusion of cash - and quickly - California will run out of federal money to pay for its program in June. To prepare for the shortfall, state officials will decide in the next two weeks whether to stop enrolling new children and send letters to 56,600 families telling them their children will lose health coverage on Dec. 31. ‘These are horrible options,’ said Lesley Cummings, who manages the state’s Healthy Families insurance program for low-income kids. ‘We never thought we were going to be in this place.’
And if you think this state is screwed?
California isn’t alone. The Congressional Research Service estimates that 21 states will exhaust their federal money next year - nine will run out of money in March - if Congress simply keeps the program funded at the current levels. Georgia’s program is already running a deficit, and is surviving only with a temporary grant from the Department of Health and Human Services. ...The state is pulling the medical records of kids to determine who are the sickest, so if they have to drop children from the program they’ll start with healthier children. ‘Georgia is on the edge of the cliff,’ said Dr. Rhonda Medows, commissioner of the Georgia Department of Community Health. ‘We don’t want to think about kids having cancer, but how do you schedule someone for six weeks of chemotherapy if they only have four weeks left in the program? Does the oncologist start the therapy or do they wait? How do you plan? You can’t.’
From the Los Angeles Times:
The Wirkkalas, with an income that for five years has hovered around $70,000 and a home they bought in 2004 for $535,000, are a family many would call middle class. But they have been priced out of the private health insurance market, and their circumstances illustrate the core of a political battle over how much a family can earn for their children to qualify for a federal-state partnership called the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP. If the outcome of Washington politics goes one way, the children could remain uninsured. If it goes the other way, the children might get health insurance.
On a larger scale,
If Congress fails to act, or even if funding is held to present levels, or increased to administration-recommended levels, the California HealthCare Foundation estimates that up to 600,000 children in California could lose their health insurance beginning in 2008. Because of healthcare inflation, California and many other states would have to begin closing off new enrollments and disenrolling some insured children, according to the foundation’s projections. ‘The funding wouldn’t allow California to maintain its present caseload, and keep up with inflation,’ Finocchio says.
As The Times’ editorial board said last month,
This bears repeating: President Bush’s bullheaded insistence on sabotaging reauthorization of the popular State Children’s Health Insurance Program, better known as SCHIP, will hurt the very people -- poor and middle-class Americans -- he claims he wants to protect.
I’d hope that the bitter realities starting to hit many American families would finally bring Bush around, but seeing as stories of children saved by SCHIP don’t seem to have moved many Republicans, I doubt that a few million more kids will make a difference.