More kids should be enrolled in Children's Health Insurance Program
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No comments [ Add Comment ]By Sen. Orrin G. Hatch
Guest commentary
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s many as 70,000 children in Utah have no health insurance. In a state -- and country -- as prosperous as ours, that number is 70,000 children too high.
We simply must take care of our children. The health care children receive when they are young is a large factor in determining their quality of life for their entire adult lives. No child should have to skip needed care.
That's why I helped to create the Children's Health Insurance Program. Enacted in 1997, this program provides states with federal matching funds to cover uninsured children of families that do not qualify for Medicaid. States could expand their Medicaid programs, create a separate program, or a combination of the two.
Now, 10 years later, we've seen incredible progress. More than 6 million children have enrolled in CHIP this year. These are children of hard-working families that earn too much to qualify for Medicaid -- yet don't have enough to pay for health insurance themselves. No matter how hard they try, they just can't afford medical coverage. CHIP has made a huge difference to these families.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that nearly 9 million children in the United States still lack health coverage. What's frustrating is there are between 2 million and 2.8 million children nationwide who are eligible for the CHIP program -- but still not enrolled. We must break through the barriers that are preventing children who qualify for CHIP from taking advantage of it and provide the resources that will make the promise of enrollment a reality. So it's clear we have a long way to go.
Thanks to increased funding backed by the Utah Legislature, an additional 12,000 Utah children -- a total of 47,000 -- will be able to receive health care under CHIP. And, with CHIP set to expire this year, Congress is set to reauthorize and strengthen this tremendously successful program.
Our goal in 1997 was to cover the children of the working poor who had no insurance coverage. Although we have come far in achieving that goal, we have clearly not reached it yet.
Now is the time for Congress to act to ensure that all of America's children are provided with the care they are entitled to receive.
It's a worthy goal -- no child in a country as prosperous as ours should be without medical coverage. And it's an achievable goal. Despite the increased partisanship in Congress, CHIP is a program that garners broad bipartisan support. The need for CHIP today is greater than ever. I am committed to making the vision of CHIP become a reality.
Hatch is Utah's senior U.S. senator. He is a member of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees CHIP.
