Trying to Cover Areas Where Family Health Insurance Falls ShortMay 2008
The drama surrounding SCHIP continues on this week, as states struggle to find ways to fill in the gaps left by an absence of affordable
family health insurance for many families.
In August of 2007 President Bush issued a directive that required states to prove that they had enrolled at least 95% of eligible children with family incomes below 200% of the poverty level in SCHIP (the State Children's Health Insurance Program) before expanding its eligibility to children in families with incomes greater than 250% of the federal poverty level.
Proving that 95% of lower income children had state funded
medical insurance is a difficult, if not impossible, enterprise. Too many parents aren't aware of their children's eligibility, and tracking down these families, not to mention getting and keeping them enrolled, isn't a walk in the park either.
For this reason, many critics argued that President Bush had effectively cut a large proportion of children out of state medical insurance. These uninsured kids are mostly those whose families are defined as lower-middle or middle class, but who can't afford family health insurance costs. The uninsured middle class has been growing exponentially in the last 8 years, as prices for insurance premiums have grown at more than double the rate of inflation.
This week, the Bush administration sent letters to state health officials designed to clarify the previous directive from August 2007. The more recent letter says that states can now use data from the Current Population Survey, including information on Medicaid, SCHIP or private medical insurance to demonstrate they had reached the 95% requirement.
Facts on:
SCHIP
Did you know...
At its creation in 1997, SCHIP was the largest expansion of health insurance coverage for children in the U.S. since Medicaid began in the 1960s?
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While this is supposedly designed to make it easier for some states to expand their SCHIP enrollment, critics argue that there still isn't enough information or guidelines as to what data will be available, or even sufficient.
Meanwhile, the struggle to provide affordable family health insurance still goes on, with everyone from local politicians to presidential hopefuls arguing for some kind of medical insurance to protect all Americans. And as we can all agree, children do better when they
and their parents can enjoy the peace of mind and health benefits that only quality insurance can provide.
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