SCHIP (volume 1)

Ben, (one of my 3 loyal readers!) asked me to comment on the passage of SCHIP through Congress last week.  While peripherally aware of LaCHIP (the Louisiana version) over the past few years, I've never dealt with the whole SCHIP issue.  So in the next few days, I'll try to deconstruct the SCHIP phenomenon from 1997 to present and summarize the arguments in favor of extending it (progressive/Democrat) or curtailing it (baby-killer...um, conservative/Republican). 

Getting a hold on the basics of actually didn't take that long.  Reading through the abstract of this paper in May 2007 by the Congressional Budget Office (ostensibly non-partisan) gives a pretty good history of the program.  Here are the highlights:

1. In 1997 Congressional Republicans and President Bush enact the States Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) as a federalist, non-entitlement insurance program to cover children who fall into the gap where they are a) not poor enough for Medicaid but b) still too poor for their families to afford private insurance.
2. The states were given an amount of money to cover these children.  They could either augment existing Medicaid programs, create new programs or find novel blends.
3. This program was to be run by the states with federal matching funds (average payment by the feds totals about 60% of the cost).
4. The program did not qualify as an 'entitlement' - meaning not every child who qualified automatically could enroll...the feds capped the funds and once the states spent this amount, they had to pay any spill-over on their own.

Now, how have the states enacted SCHIP and what are the health outcomes...we'll tackle that next.   And later, we'll explore the spectrum of progressive to conservative arguments about the future of SCHIP.

Meanwhile, since states base SCHIP and Medicaid eligibility based on percentages poverty level, here's the census bureau's poverty thresholds.  For example, a mother with 2 children needs to make greater than $16, 242 to escape 'poverty'.