The Morning Brief: White House Seeks to Limit Child Insurance Program
The Wall Street Journal Online</br></br>The Morning Brief, a look at the day's biggest news, is emailed to subscribers by 7 a.m. every business day. Sign up for the e-mail here.</br></br>On Friday evening, with Congress out of town on its summer recess and Americans heading into a mid-August weekend, the Bush administration sent a message to the states: The federal government will make it tougher for a national children's insurance program to cover the offspring of middle-income families.</br></br>The State Children's Health Insurance Program was created in 1997 to help children whose families couldn't afford insurance but didn't qualify for Medicaid, and administration officials tell the New York Times that the changes are aimed at returning the program to its low- income focus and assuring it didn't become a replacement for private insurance. Administration point man Dennis Smith wrote to state officials saying there would be new restrictions on the District of Columbia and the 18 states -- including California and New York -- that extend or plan to extend coverage for children whose families make more than 250% of Federal poverty levels. For a family of three that 250% is $42,900, and for a family of four it's $51,625. Under the new limits, a child from a family making more would have to spend one year uninsured before qualifying, and any state that wants to extend coverage would have to assure Washington that at least 95% of children eligible for SCHIP or Medicaid are enrolled in one of the programs. But as the Associated Press reports, no state can currently make such assurances.</br></br>Rachel Klein, deputy director of health policy for advocacy group Families USA, tells the AP that since many families above the 250% threshold can't afford private insurance, "the effect of this policy is to have more uninsured kids." Ann Clemency Kohler, deputy commissioner of human services in New Jersey, tells the Times the changes "will cause havoc with our program and could jeopardize coverage for thousands of children." States have already been imposing waiting periods and taking other steps to prevent parents from moving their children from private insurance to SCHIP, which currently serves some 6.6 million children, the Washington Post notes. The administration's new restrictions come as the program, which expires at the end of next month if Congress doesn't reauthorize it, is the subject of a larger political fight that pits the White House against Democrats and some Republicans in Congress and state capitals.