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Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 04:08:40 -0800
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WASHINGTON — With more and more states running out of money for the
Children’s Health care Program, parents took their case to Capitol Hill
on Tuesday, pleading with Congress to provide money before their sons and
daughters lose health care and coverage.

But the program, known as CHIP, which insures nearly nine million children,
took a back seat as lawmakers raced to pass a $1.5 trillion tax cut.
CHIP’s fate, it appears, is now caught up in a messy over an
end-of-the-year deal on using that must be struck by Friday to avert a
government shutdown. “CHIP is being used as a pawn in larger debates and
negotiations,” Linda Nablo, the chief deputy director of the Virginia
Department of Medical Assistance Services, said Tuesday in a meeting. “It
has fallen victim to the partisanship in Congress. And we are getting very
close to the point where some children will also be victims.” Virginia
sent letters last week to parents of 68,000 children warning them that CHIP
coverage would end on Jan. 31 unless Congress took action. Congress has
known since April 2015 that funds for the popular children’s care program
— created and sustained for two decades with bipartisan support — would
expire this year at the end of September. The Senate Finance Committee
approved a five-year extension of funding for the program in early October,
but did not specify how to pay for it — and Republicans insist that it
must be paid for. The House passed a bill to provide five years of funds in
early November, but those funds would come from public health programs set
up under the Affordable Care Act and an increase in premiums for affluent
care beneficiaries, provisions that are unacceptable to most Democrats.
House Republicans plan to send those same provisions to the Senate again
this week as part of a stopgap using bill, knowing they will be killed.
Meantime, the Alabama Department of Public Health posted a notice on its
website this week saying that it would freeze enrollment in the
Children’s Health care  Program on Jan. 1 and would not renew any
coverage after that date. “If Congress does not act soon, coverage for
children now enrolled in CHIP will end on Feb. 1,” Cathy Caldwell, the
director of the Alabama program, said Tuesday in a meeting. Colorado and
Connecticut, among other states, have sent letters informing families that
their children may soon lose CHIP coverage. “Congress has not acted to
continue the funding, so we must plan to end the CHIP program on Jan.
31,” said the letters from the Connecticut Department of Services.


To parents of sick children, the gamesmanship in Washington was
incomprehensible, especially as Congress was passing a $1.5 trillion tax
cut with little worry over its cost to the Treasury. “I am here to call
on the Senate to do the right thing and invest in our nation’s true
future, invest in the children, to maintain children’s lives,” said
Sonja Reynolds, who came to the Capitol from Pleasant Grove, Utah. She has
five children on CHIP, including two with Crohn’s disease, a bad
condition. Every eight weeks, she takes the two with Crohn’s to a
hospital for infusions of Remicade, an expensive biologic thing. Without
CHIP, she said, she could not afford the treatments. Amy Jo Hutchison came
to Washington with her daughters, 10 and 13, from Wheeling, W.Va. As an
infant, her older daughter was blind in one eye, and CHIP helps pay for
regular one to a pediatric ophthalmologist, Ms. Hutchison said. De’Andrea
Choice of Tyler, Tex., said CHIP had been “a blessing to me and my
son.” Her son is 15, regularly needs to see medical specialists and takes
several medications for a condition known as fecal incontinence or
encopresis. “Without CHIP,” she said, “I would not have been able to
afford his one , and his medicine would have been difficult for me to get.
Angelique Smith came from Lakewood, Colo., with her 5-year-old son,
Malachi, hoping to persuade Senator Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado,
to join the state’s Democratic senator, Michael Bennet, in pushing for
continuation of CHIP. Parents and children conveyed their message to
Congress on Tuesday, the 80th day since federal CHIP funds expired.
No using bill can clear the Senate without Democratic votes, so the
minority does have leverage, but Democrats also have other priorities in
negotiations over the using bill. They seek protections for young
immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children. They want to
be sure that any increase in military using is matched by an increase in
domestic using . Senators from both parties, including the majority chief,
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, may try to attach a bipartisan bill to
stabilize health care markets and hold down care premiums. That proposal
faces fierce resistance from conservative House Republicans who see it as
propping up Obamacare. And some Democrats, especially the 10 up for
re-election next year in states won by President Trump, fear that a
government shutdown would harm their political futures. Republicans and
Democrats blame each other for the stalemate over CHIP. Senator Bob Casey,
Democrat of Pennsylvania, told parents on Tuesday that he could not explain
Congress’s failure to fund the program. “Some members of Congress are
obsessed about getting the tax bill done,” Mr. Casey said. “They’ve
been waiting for this, some of them, their whole lives. They think it’s
the most important thing in the world. But, my God, if you can using months
and weeks making sure that the corporate tax rate is just where it needs to
be, so that you can satisfy corporate chief, if you can tinker with that,
and have tax breaks for the superrich, if you can work that hard, why is it
so hard to get a bipartisan children’s health care bill done?” Senator
Angus King, independent of Maine, offered a possible answer: “Maybe it is
because none of our kids are in this program. I venture to say that if the
children of the members of the Senate were in the CHIP program, we would
have met that deadline” of Sept. 30. While Congress squabbles, state
officials are sounding the alarm. A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation
found that 16 states expect to exhaust their federal CHIP funds by the end
of January, with 21 additional states saying they would run out by the end
of March. The Trump administration has reshuffled money to help states with
the most urgent needs. But in so doing, it exacerbates the financial
problems that other states will soon face because Congress has not provided
any new funds.
Republican governors, including Greg Abbott of Texas and Scott Walker of
Wisconsin, have joined Democrats in urgent appeals to Congress, without
much success.

© Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times

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WASHINGTON — With more and more states running out of money for the
Children’s Health care Program, parents took their case to Capitol Hill
on Tuesday, pleading with Congress to provide money before their sons and
daughters lose health care and coverage.&nbsp;<a
href="http://www.2367.gs/unsubscribe.php?M=2835008!G=0!LID=17!N=326!D=p_5!lan=en!O=AjpVcgMlACkKalJ5VnkHYwg1UGlVIAJoCmJYPA0lUDRRNANoAHwKYgBvAjZTfA%3D%3D">Unsubscribe</a>
<br />
<br />
But the program, known as CHIP, which insures nearly nine million children,
took a back seat as lawmakers raced to pass a $1.5 trillion tax cut.
CHIP’s fate, it appears, is now caught up in a messy over an
end-of-the-year deal on using that must be struck by Friday to avert a
government shutdown. “CHIP is being used as a pawn in larger debates and
negotiations,” Linda Nablo, the chief deputy director of the Virginia
Department of Medical Assistance Services, said Tuesday in a meeting. “It
has fallen victim to the partisanship in Congress. And we are getting very
close to the point where some children will also be victims.” Virginia
sent letters last week to parents of 68,000 children warning them that CHIP
coverage would end on Jan. 31 unless Congress took action. Congress has
known since April 2015 that funds for the popular children’s care program
— created and sustained for two decades with bipartisan support — would
expire this year at the end of September. The Senate Finance Committee
approved a five-year extension of funding for the program in early October,
but did not specify how to pay for it — and Republicans insist that it
must be paid for. The House passed a bill to provide five years of funds in
early November, but those funds would come from public health programs set
up under the Affordable Care Act and an increase in premiums for affluent
care beneficiaries, provisions that are unacceptable to most Democrats.
House Republicans plan to send those same provisions to the Senate again
this week as part of a stopgap using bill, knowing they will be killed.
Meantime, the Alabama Department of Public Health posted a notice on its
website this week saying that it would freeze enrollment in the
Children’s Health care&nbsp; Program on Jan. 1 and would not renew any
coverage after that date. “If Congress does not act soon, coverage for
children now enrolled in CHIP will end on Feb. 1,” Cathy Caldwell, the
director of the Alabama program, said Tuesday in a meeting. Colorado and
Connecticut, among other states, have sent letters informing families that
their children may soon lose CHIP coverage. “Congress has not acted to
continue the funding, so we must plan to end the CHIP program on Jan.
31,” said the letters from the Connecticut Department of Services.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
To parents of sick children, the gamesmanship in Washington was
incomprehensible, especially as Congress was passing a $1.5 trillion tax
cut with little worry over its cost to the Treasury. “I am here to call
on the Senate to do the right thing and invest in our nation’s true
future, invest in the children, to maintain children’s lives,” said
Sonja Reynolds, who came to the Capitol from Pleasant Grove, Utah. She has
five children on CHIP, including two with Crohn’s disease, a bad
condition. Every eight weeks, she takes the two with Crohn’s to a
hospital for infusions of Remicade, an expensive biologic thing. Without
CHIP, she said, she could not afford the treatments. Amy Jo Hutchison came
to Washington with her daughters, 10 and 13, from Wheeling, W.Va. As an
infant, her older daughter was blind in one eye, and CHIP helps pay for
regular one to a pediatric ophthalmologist, Ms. Hutchison said. De’Andrea
Choice of Tyler, Tex., said CHIP had been “a blessing to me and my
son.” Her son is 15, regularly needs to see medical specialists and takes
several medications for a condition known as fecal incontinence or
encopresis. “Without CHIP,” she said, “I would not have been able to
afford his one , and his medicine would have been difficult for me to get.
Angelique Smith came from Lakewood, Colo., with her 5-year-old son,
Malachi, hoping to persuade Senator Cory Gardner, Republican of Colorado,
to join the state’s Democratic senator, Michael Bennet, in pushing for
continuation of CHIP. Parents and children conveyed their message to
Congress on Tuesday, the 80th day since federal CHIP funds expired.<br />
No using bill can clear the Senate without Democratic votes, so the
minority does have leverage, but Democrats also have other priorities in
negotiations over the using bill. They seek protections for young
immigrants brought to the United States illegally as children. They want to
be sure that any increase in military using is matched by an increase in
domestic using . Senators from both parties, including the majority chief,
Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, may try to attach a bipartisan bill to
stabilize health care markets and hold down care premiums. That proposal
faces fierce resistance from conservative House Republicans who see it as
propping up Obamacare. And some Democrats, especially the 10 up for
re-election next year in states won by President Trump, fear that a
government shutdown would harm their political futures. Republicans and
Democrats blame each other for the stalemate over CHIP. Senator Bob Casey,
Democrat of Pennsylvania, told parents on Tuesday that he could not explain
Congress’s failure to fund the program. “Some members of Congress are
obsessed about getting the tax bill done,” Mr. Casey said. “They’ve
been waiting for this, some of them, their whole lives. They think it’s
the most important thing in the world. But, my God, if you can using months
and weeks making sure that the corporate tax rate is just where it needs to
be, so that you can satisfy corporate chief, if you can tinker with that,
and have tax breaks for the superrich, if you can work that hard, why is it
so hard to get a bipartisan children’s health care bill done?” Senator
Angus King, independent of Maine, offered a possible answer: “Maybe it is
because none of our kids are in this program. I venture to say that if the
children of the members of the Senate were in the CHIP program, we would
have met that deadline” of Sept. 30. While Congress squabbles, state
officials are sounding the alarm. A survey by the Kaiser Family Foundation
found that 16 states expect to exhaust their federal CHIP funds by the end
of January, with 21 additional states saying they would run out by the end
of March. The Trump administration has reshuffled money to help states with
the most urgent needs. But in so doing, it exacerbates the financial
problems that other states will soon face because Congress has not provided
any new funds.<br />
Republican governors, including Greg Abbott of Texas and Scott Walker of
Wisconsin, have joined Democrats in urgent appeals to Congress, without
much success.<br />
<br />
&copy; Gabriella Demczuk for The New York Times<br />
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