AGA Today
Federal Study Offers Dire
Outlook on Child Insurance
By
Robert Pear
The New York Times
Published: October 31, 2007
WASHINGTON, Oct. 30 — Twenty-one states will run out of money for
children’s health insurance in the coming year, and at least nine of
those states will exhaust their allotments in March if Congress simply
continues spending at current levels, a new federal study says.
The findings added urgency to bipartisan talks on Capitol Hill intended
to overcome an impasse over expansion of the State Children’s Health
Insurance Program.
Top House Republicans, including Representative John A. Boehner of Ohio,
the minority leader, met Tuesday with senators of both parties,
including the chairman of the Finance Committee, Max Baucus, Democrat of
Montana, to seek a compromise.
Their goal is to revise a bill, vetoed by President Bush, to pick up
Republican support in the House and gain enough votes to override
another veto threatened by the president.
Mr. Bush complained that White House officials were not included in the
discussions.
“After going alone and going nowhere, Congress should instead work with
the administration on a bill that puts poor children first,” Mr. Bush
said Tuesday.
States, unsure of federal money, are drafting contingency plans in case
it runs short.
Officials in charge of the child health program in California said
Tuesday that they were adopting rules to allow the state to create a
waiting list and to remove some of the 1.1 million children already on
the rolls.
“The stalemate in Washington is having a real impact on children here,”
said Lesley S. Cummings, executive director of the agency that runs the
child health program in California. “Given continued uncertainty, we
will have to start dropping children from the program — 64,000 a month,
starting in January — to save money. This is getting less and less
hypothetical.”
According to the new study, from the Congressional Research Service, the
nine states that will run out of money by March are Alaska, Georgia,
Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode
Island.
The federal budget for the program is $5 billion for the current fiscal
year, which began Oct. 1. But states, by their own estimates, expect to
spend $7.6 billion. To continue coverage for people now enrolled in the
21 states would require an extra $1.6 billion just for the current
fiscal year, the study said.
The bill vetoed by Mr. Bush, like a similar bill passed last week by the
House, would provide $9 billion in the current fiscal year, or 80
percent more than the current allotments, the Congressional Research
Service said. Allotments would more than double in 14 states, including
Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi and North
Carolina. In recent years, spending in these states has often exceeded
allotments.
The Senate passed the original child health bill last month, 67 to 29,
with 18 Republicans voting for it. Two of those Republicans, Senators
Charles E. Grassley of Iowa and Orrin G. Hatch of Utah, helped write the
bill and have been negotiating with House members of both parties to
round up Republican support for a revised version of the bill.
Tension among Republicans burst into the open on Tuesday as the Senate
Republican whip, Trent Lott of Mississippi, complained that the Bush
administration and Senate Republican leaders had been excluded from the
negotiations.
“There are a multitude of problems with the bill” and “huge problems”
with the negotiations, Mr. Lott said. He chided Mr. Hatch and Mr.
Grassley, saying they had sought a deal on the child health program
without adequately consulting him or the Senate Republican leader, Mitch
McConnell of Kentucky.
Mr. Lott and Mr. McConnell voted against the bill last month.
“The biggest problem,” Mr. Lott said Tuesday, “is that we are still
talking about a $35 billion” expansion of the program over the next five
years, “instead of trying to come to a compromise on the money necessary
to cover poor children first.”
The Senate majority
leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said Republican leaders appeared
to be more interested in blocking Democratic accomplishments than in
getting a deal on the child health bill. The Republicans, Mr. Reid said,
are trying to “slow, stall and stop the legislative process.”