OPEN
BORDERS:
IT'S ALL
ABOUT KEEPING WAGES DEPRESSED AND PASSING ALONG
THE
ILLEGALS' WELFARE AND CRIME COSTS TO THE AMERICAN
MIDDLE
CLASS!
“That Washington-imposed policy of
mass-immigration floods the
market with foreign labor, spikes profits and Wall Street values by cutting salaries for manual and skilled labor offered by
blue-collar and white-collar employees. It also drives up real estate prices, widens wealth-gaps, reduces high-tech investment, increases state and local tax burdens, hurts kids’ schools and college education, pushes Americans away from high-tech careers, and sidelines at least 5 million
marginalized Americans and
their families, including many who are now struggling with opioid addictions.” ---- NEIL MUNRO
US Congress
fails to reauthorize insurance program covering 9 million children
By Kate Randall
3 October 2017
The US Congress missed a deadline to reauthorize the Children’s
Health Insurance Program (CHIP) over the weekend. The failure to act threatens
health insurance coverage for about 9 million children in lower-income families
across the United States. Although the Senate released a five-year bill to
reauthorize the program last week, a vote was not scheduled by the Republican
Senate leadership.
States will begin to feel the effects of Congress’s inaction as
soon as the end of this year. Previously, when some states closed CHIP
enrollment for limited periods in response to budget shortfalls, studies show
that eligible individuals were left without access to coverage, causing
negative effects on family health and finances.
Funding for CHIP expired on September 30. Although funds did not
immediately dry up on October 1, the program faces imminent shutdown in a
number of states. Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s
Center for Children and Families, told reporters earlier this month, “This is
ridiculous. It’s already too late. We have never had a situation like this
before.”
CHIP was passed into law under the Clinton administration with
bipartisan support, championed by then-first lady Hillary Clinton. The program
provides low-cost health coverage to children in families that earn too much to
qualify for Medicaid.
Although eligibility rules vary by state, in most states children
age 18 and younger qualify for the program if their family’s income falls below
200 percent of the federal poverty line, or just under $50,000 for a family of
four. Some states offer coverage to children in families earning up to 300
percent over the federal poverty line, and 20 states also offer coverage to
pregnant women.
CHIP provides low-cost insurance for a large range of benefits,
varying by state, including routine checkups, immunizations, mental health
services, prescriptions, inpatient and outpatient hospital care, x-rays and lab
services. An analysis from the American Academy of Pediatrics found that
families are much more likely to attend to preventive and primary care after
enrolling their children in the program.
Average costs to families run about $150 per child annually,
compared to insurance premiums of more than $850 per year per child in
employer-sponsored insurance, according to a report from the Medicaid and CHIP
Payment and Access Commission released earlier this year.
About 9 million children are currently insured through CHIP. Since
its enactment, the uninsured rate among children has fallen significantly, from
13.9 percent in 1997 to 4.5 percent in 2015, the Access Commission says. In
2016, more than 8.9 million children were enrolled, up from 8.44 million in
2015.
CHIP currently costs about $14 billion a year, with the federal
government picking up about three-quarters of this cost. Some states provide
CHIP as part of the expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (ACA),
others operate a separate CHIP program, while some provide a combination of
these approaches. Under expiration, states with CHIP-funded Medicaid expansion
would be required to maintain this coverage, but with lowered federal funding.
States with separate CHIP coverage would not be required to maintain it.
According to an analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), 48
of 50 responding states, including the District of Columbia, assumed continued
federal funding for CHIP in their fiscal year 2018 budgets. Thirty-four of 42
responding states also assumed they would receive the 23 percent match included
as part of Obamacare. This means that the majority of states face a funding
shortfall due to CHIP’s expiration.
Ten states—Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Mississippi, Oregon, Idaho,
Nevada, Utah, Arizona, California and Hawaii—anticipate exhausting CHIP funding
by the end of 2017. Most states must provide 30 days’ notice to enrollees that
their coverage will be eliminated.
Previous state enrollment caps and freezes in CHIP benefits have
had a disastrous effect on coverage and medical services. When North Carolina
froze enrollment between January and October 2001, enrollment fell by nearly 30
percent, from about 72,000 to 51,300, according to KFF. Parents affected by the
freeze said that almost all of their children experienced periods of being uninsured
and reported difficulties obtaining prescriptions for them. They also reported
obtaining care for their children required them to cut back on necessities,
borrow money from family or friends, or accrue debt.
House Democratic Caucus Chairman Rep. Joe Crowley (New York),
blamed Republicans for missing the CHIP reauthorization deadline. However,
neither House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi nor Senate Minority leader Chuck
Schumer has voiced loud protests over congressional inaction that threatens the
health care of millions of US children.
The failure to reauthorize CHIP follows last week’s collapse of
Senate Republicans’ latest Obamacare repeal effort, as Majority Leader Mitch
McConnell pulled legislation sponsored by Sens. Lindsey Graham (South Carolina)
and Bill Cassidy (Louisiana), when it became clear the measure did not have the
votes to pass.
While committees in both the House and Senate said hours before
Congress failed to reauthorize CHIP that they would take up the legislation for
the children’s program again this week, such action is anything but assured.
Joan Benso, president and CEO of advocacy group Pennsylvania Partnerships for
Children, told the Morning
Call, “If we get to November and it’s not done, then we’ll get
pretty concerned.”
In the wake of the latest failure to repeal the ACA, a bipartisan
effort to “fix” Obamacare by Sens. Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee,
and Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington, is expected to continue. This effort
is not aimed at extending coverage to the 28 million Americans who remain
uninsured seven years after the passage of the ACA, but at “stabilizing” the
insurance markets.
Such a bipartisan deal would retain the basic framework of
Obamacare, which has broad support from the insurance companies and big business,
bloating the profits of the insurers while at the same time increasing
out-of-pocket health care costs for the vast majority of Americans.
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