Lawmakers eye child insurance program

[Ron Burgundy]

AP - Congress probably will take its time in considering President Bush's plan for expanding health insurance coverage. Lawmakers, however, are moving more quickly to renew a program that now provides coverage to 6 million people, mostly children.

The State Children's Health Insurance Program expires Sept. 30. Democrats and Republicans say they want to swiftly reauthorize the program.

"There is no greater priority for the Finance Committee in the health arena this year," said Sen. Max Baucus (news, bio, voting record), the committee's new chairman. "It's No. 1."

When Congress approved the program in 1997, it provided $40 billion over 10 years. States use the money, along with their own dollars, to subsidize health coverage for families with incomes too high to qualify for Medicaid but too low to afford insurance through the private sector.

Job Bedford, 13, of Baltimore, told Baucus' committee Thursday that being in the program means he can take his asthma medicine with him wherever he goes, which makes him feel safer.

"Asthma attacks are kind of scary. They are very unpredictable and there is always the worry in the back of my mind that I might just die," he said.

Interest groups and trade associations are lobbying for a major expansion of the program as a way to reduce the ranks of the uninsured, now estimated at 46.6 million.

But some senators sought to temper expectations.

Sen. Charles Grassley (news, bio, voting record), R-Iowa, noted the program will require Congress to find $12 billion to $15 billion over the next five years just to serve the existing population. That is above the $25 billion that Congress would spend under the current money formula.

Grassley said he has not heard any advocacy groups say how Congress should pay for expanding the program. He does not consider raising taxes an option.

"A critical part of the discussion needs to be about how we are going to pay for the existing services before we can discuss expanding services," Grassley said.

Committee Republicans said restricting the number of adults eligible to participate could allow more children to be covered.

Some states use their share of the grant money to expand insurance coverage for adults. Arizona, Wisconsin and others even cover more adults than children.

Gov. Sonny Perdue, R-Ga., told lawmakers his state will run out of federal money for its children's health insurance program by March. That would affect 273,000 children.

But even as some states struggle with shortfalls, others get enough money to cover populations that were never the intended recipients of the program, Perdue said.

Several Republicans agreed with Perdue's assessment that the program's resources should be focused on children.

"The SCHIP program is for kids," Grassley said. "The C stands for children. There is no A is SCHIP."

Overall, about 639,000 adults get health insurance through the program.

Congress recently provided $283 million to prevent states from experiencing shortfalls in health insurance funding. It also prohibited states from using their program money to provide coverage to adults without children. An exception was allowed for those states already given permission to extend coverage to adults.

But Cindy Mann, executive director of the Center for Children and Families, said removing adults from the program would not free up significant money for children.

"The adults covered through this initiative are very low income. We're talking about people who work at minimum wage or at $7 or $8 an hour," Mann said. "They don't have other options, so the ramification of dropping them would be to increase the number of uninsured people. That would be an ironic result of SCHIP reauthorization."

Baucus, D-Mont., said after the hearing that he does not want to just renew the program, but expand it.

"Were going to need more money for CHIP," he said. "And we need to move fast to find it to keep kids from losing coverage this year."

Christina Pearson, a spokeswoman for the Health and Human Services Department, said Secretary Mike Leavitt is committed to renewing the program. She declined to cite specifics on how much money the administration would seek in the president's 2008 budget proposal to be submitted to Congress on Monday.

On the House side, Democrats have said they would seek money for expanding children's insurance coverage and for improving outreach.

source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070201/ap_on_go_co/health_insurance_children [link]