Covering Children’S Health In The United States

Running Head: CHILDREN’S HEALTH

Covering Children’s Health in the United States

Covering Children’s Health in the United States

The newspaper article, Federal Study Offers Dire Outlook on Child Insurance, discussed current issues regarding the State Children’s Health Insurance program. A federal study states that within the next year, if Congress continues to spend at their current levels, twenty-one U.S. states will run out of money for children’s health insurance. The findings added to the already pressing needs of bipartisan discussions intended to overcome barriers over expansion of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. Representatives of the Top House Republicans and senators from both parties are coming together with the goal of revising the bill, picking up Republican support and gaining enough votes to override another veto threatened by the president. States, unsure of federal money, are preparing contingency plans in case the program runs short. Currently, since the program is running dry of money, many states are coming up with waiting lists for the many children who need to participate in the program as well as dropping up to 64,000 children a month from the program. According to the federal study, to continue covering the people currently enrolled in the program would take an extra $1.6 billion just for the current fiscal year (Pear, October 2007).

The State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) is a national program that helps states provide health insurance to uninsured children with income that is modest, but too high to qualify for Medicaid (Nelson & Duchovny, 2007). In 2007, Congress passed legislation, which would have increased program coverage from roughly seven million participants to eleven million by 2012. Over the next five years, it is estimated that this would have increased the cost of the program from about thirty five billion dollars to sixty billion dollars (State Children’s Health Insurance Program, 2007). However, President Bush vetoed the legislation, principally on grounds that it was too costly and that it provided coverage for families who had sufficient income to pay for their own health insurance (Pear, 2007). Congressional democrats and republicans are currently trying to arrive at a compromise that would attract sufficient votes to overcome another presidential veto.

If such a compromise is reached, the winners will be the additional individuals who will be covered by the expanded program, principally children. Depending on the terms of any ultimate compromise, there may be several different losers - families with children who have relatively modest incomes (less then 300% of the poverty line) which may not be covered, parents of children who may be excluded from coverage, and children of illegal immigrants (Pear, 2007). It is also possible that some private insurance companies will lose business because some individuals who might have otherwise purchased private insurance may secure coverage under the expanded program.

The primary advantage of expanding the program is that many children who might not otherwise receive timely and preventative medical care because they have no insurance coverage would now be afforded such coverage. The disadvantage is that any major expansion of the program will cost a lot of money. The cost may not, however, be as high as it looks at first glance because, if the program is not expanded, many of these children would be covered by the medical assistance program (Medicaid). So, in that sense, the government might save part of the cost of the new expanded program by the savings that result from lower Medicaid costs. The children with the expanded insurance may also receive more timely care so that the greater costs associated with emergency care may be reduced.

It may or may not be advantageous to exclude parents of low-income children from participation in SCHIP. On the one hand, covering the parents encourages them to participate in the program and to provide for their children's participation. On the other hand, the program is aimed principally at children and covering their parents increases the program's cost. Similarly, it may or may not be advantageous to cover the children of illegal immigrants. Covering such children may encourage illegal immigration, however, most people believe that illegal immigrants do not come to the United States specifically to obtain health insurance for their children. In any event, hospitals may not turn away illegal immigrants who require emergency medical care, so someone is going to pay for such care regardless of whether this program is expanded to cover these children. To the extent that this program substitutes for private insurance which might otherwise be purchased