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Children's Health Insurance Program

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Children's Health Insurance Program

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Children's Health Insurance Program

The Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), formerly known as the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), is a program administered by the United States Department of Health and Human Services that provides matching funds to states for health insurance to families with children. The program was designed to cover uninsured children in families with incomes that are modest but too high to qualify for Medicaid. The program was passed into law as part of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, and the statutory authority for CHIP is under title XXI of the Social Security Act.

CHIP was formulated in the aftermath of the failure of President Bill Clinton's comprehensive health care reform proposal. First Lady Hillary Clinton's brainchild in the aftermath of the failing of passage of her healthcare reform work, this Legislation to create CHIP was co-sponsored by Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy and Republican Senator Orrin Hatch. Despite opposition from some conservatives, SCHIP was included in the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, which President Clinton signed into law in August 1997. At the time of its creation, SCHIP represented the largest expansion of taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage for children in the U.S. since the establishment of Medicaid in 1965.[citation needed] The Children's Health Insurance Reauthorization Act of 2009 extended CHIP and expanded the program to cover an additional 4 million children and pregnant women, and the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 extended CHIP's authorization through 2027[citation needed].

CHIP was designed as a federal-state partnership similar to Medicaid; programs are run by the individual states according to requirements set by the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. States are given flexibility in designing their CHIP policies within broad federal guidelines, resulting in variations regarding eligibility, benefits, and administration across different states. Many states contract with private companies to administer some portions of their CHIP benefits. Some states have received authority to use CHIP funds to cover certain adults, including pregnant women and parents of children receiving benefits from both CHIP and Medicaid.

CHIP covered 7.7 million children during federal fiscal year 2010, and every state has an approved plan. Nonetheless, the number of uninsured children continued to rise after 1997, particularly among families that did not qualify for CHIP. An October 2007 study by the Vimo Research Group found that 68.7 percent of newly uninsured children were in families whose incomes were 200 percent of the federal poverty level or higher as more employers dropped dependents or dropped coverage altogether due to annual premiums nearly doubling between 2000 and 2006. A 2007 study from researchers at Brigham Young University and Arizona State found that children who drop out of CHIP cost their states more money due to the increased use of emergency care. A 2018 survey of the existing research noted that the availability of "CHIP coverage for children has led to improvements in access to health care and to improvements in health over both the short-run and the long-run."

The Children's Health Insurance Program grew out of years of work in the U.S. Congress to improve Americans' health coverage. Almost a decade prior, the U.S. Bipartisan Commission on Comprehensive Health Care was formed in 1989 and charged with recommending "legislative action to ensure coverage for all Americans." The commission, renamed the Pepper Commission in honor of its creator and first chair Representative Claude Pepper (D-Fla.), laid out a blueprint to achieve universal coverage. Given the challenges of comprehensive health reform, Governor Jay Rockefeller, who was elected chair following Rep. Pepper's death, emphasized his commitment to pursue legislative action not only on the commission's full set of recommendations but also on a "down payment"—to expand public health coverage immediately for children and pregnant women, consistent with the principles the commission put forward. The legislation would guarantee public insurance coverage through Medicaid for every American child living in poverty and offset the cost of the improvements by doubling the federal excise tax on cigarettes.

Quickly after his election in 1992, President Bill Clinton assembled a task force to write a comprehensive health reform bill, and he worked with Congress to introduce the Health Security Act (HSA) in November 1993. It included provisions such as universal coverage and a basic benefit package, health insurance reform, and consumer choice of health plans.

After the HSA failed in the fall of 1994, congressional leaders and the administration recognized the need for an incremental, bipartisan approach to health care reform. Senator Jay Rockefeller continued to argue for expanded coverage for children. He referenced an amendment for accelerated coverage children and pregnant women offered during the Senate Finance Committee's health care reform markup that was adopted by a bipartisan majority of 12 to 8 as evidence that there was bipartisan support to provide assistance to children. He also went on to say expanding coverage for children was essential to reforming the welfare system to "prevent families from having to go and off welfare to qualify for Medicaid."

The 1996 Bipartisan Budget Agreement made net reductions in federal Medicaid spending over a five-year period but anticipated an additional $16 billion in spending on children's health care over the same period. However, it did not provide details on how that money would be spent. In 1997, several members of Congress introduced bills to cover uninsured children using that $16 billion, and the two most popular proposals were the Chafee-Rockefeller proposal and the Kennedy-Hatch proposal.

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