Nearly 400,000 Texas children could lose healthcare coverage in late January unless Congress renews funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program, a decades-old federal program that provides health care to millions of children across the country.
Texas officials have asked the federal government for $90 million to keep CHIP alive through February, but without that funding, letters could go out later this month from state officials alerting parents that their children’s benefits could be at risk.
Congress allowed the program to expire on Sept. 30, leaving Texas and other states with dwindling coffers. CHIP typically receives bipartisan support, but lawmakers have failed to agree in recent months on how to fund it.
“We’re closely monitoring congressional efforts to reauthorize the program and are hopeful that it will be extended prior to the exhaustion of our current allotment,” said Carrie Williams, a spokeswoman with the Texas of State Health Services. “Based on our conversations with [Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services] … we are confident that a redistribution of funds will happen.”
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If the state doesn’t get additional funding soon, it will have to begin shutting down the program, officials said. State law requires termination notices go out to parents a month before they lose coverage; those letters would likely go out days before Christmas.
Catherine Troisi, an infectious disease epidemiologist at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, said many children on CHIP have chronic diseases and rely on regular, monthly appointments.
“That’ll put a lot of stress on families who don’t know if they are going to be able to continue to get that kind of care,” she said.
Unlike other states, Texas doesn’t currently have any plans to fund the program. If the state runs out of money, it will send all CHIP recipients to the federal government’s health care marketplace.
See here and here for the background. This is 100% the fault of Congressional Republicans, who let this lapse during their months-long obsession with Obamacare repeal. They’re not paying attention to it now because of the need to cut taxes for millionaires. Better grow up to be rich, kids. It’s your only hope.