CHIP Finally Funded After Expiring Last September

After losing congressional funding in September, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) was funded for another six years Monday. States were in danger of running out of funds to continue the program or had already run out of funds.

CHIP is state-run but relies on federal funding to insure children whose families make too much money to qualify for Medicaid. Nearly 9 million children had low-cost insurance through CHIP in 2016, according to government data.

Since CHIP began in 1997, the rate of uninsured children has been cut in half, according to a report in Health Affairs in 2014. The report also stated that children were more likely to have at least one medical and one dental check-up in a year since the program began.

Prior to September, CHIP had bipartisan support. However, the program’s funding was bundled with issues like the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and immigration policy that had Republicans and Democrats divided, Vox reports. At first, Republicans proposed cuts to ACA and medicare to fund CHIP, which was not backed up by Democrats.

In January, the Republicans included CHIP funding in a plan that would fund the rest of government, but the Democrats rejected it citing unaddressed issues relating to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program (DACA). This led to the government shutdown on Saturday, which ended on Monday and allowed for the six-year funding of CHIP.

Photo by Shealah Craighead via whitehouse.gov