Legislators from the House and Senate last night worked towards passing a bill that would renew and expand the State Children's Health Insurance Program by $35 billion over five years. The bill draws from provisions in a renewal bill passed in the Senate in recent months.
Recent SCHIP debates have concerned President Bush's proposal to limit the eligibility levels of states, which are based on family income levels in relation to the federal poverty line. Some states have proposed opening SCHIP to families within 400 percent of the poverty line.
The bill legislators revised last night would scale back Bush's restrictions on eligibility increases, potentially allowing more middle-income families to enroll their children in SCHIP. Critics have said that such expansions would make SCHIP a steppingstone to a single-payer insurance system.
Nearly 10 million children would be covered by SCHIP under the revised program. The $35 billion expansion would be funded by a 39-cent increase on the per-pack federal cigarette tax - a provision in the Senate's proposal.
Lawmakers appear to have chosen the Senate bill as their blueprint for expansion, rather than the House version, which includes a $50 billion increase over five years and was only narrowly passed in a party-line vote. The Senate's version, drafted by the Finance Committee, was passed in a 68-31 vote - enough to stave off the threat of a veto from President Bush.
SCHIP is set to expire on Sept. 30.
"We are pushing toward agreement, and working hard to shape a final package for broad, bipartisan support," an aide to Finance Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) told The Washington Post.
Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) was among the early critics of the Senate's original bill. "One of my concerns about the program as it is now is that it also will actually be taking children now on private insurance off that coverage and putting them onto SCHIP," said Lott. "There are an estimated 2.1 million children who will be moved from private health insurance to the government-run health care program."