Mr. President, I am pleased to commend the Finance Committee and Senators Hatch and Rockefeller for holding a hearing on the State Children's Health Insurance Program, SCHIP. This program has meant a decade of health care coverage for…
Mr. President, I am pleased to commend the Finance Committee and Senators Hatch and Rockefeller for holding a hearing on the State Children's Health Insurance Program, SCHIP. This program has meant a decade of health care coverage for millions of low-income children who would otherwise be uninsured.
My interest and commitment to the success of the SCHIP program goes back to its inception. My father, the late Senator John H. Chafee, along with Senator Rockefeller, designed and introduced S. 674, the Children's Health Insurance Provides Security, CHIPS, Act on April 30, 1997. With help from a bipartisan coalition of Members, including Senators Hatch and Kennedy, this effort came to fruition later that year when Congress approved the State Children's Health Insurance Program, SCHIP.
When SCHIP was introduced there were 10 million uninsured children in the United States including 3 million who were eligible for Medicaid but were not enrolled. The SCHIP program sought to alleviate this unmet need by offering States additional Federal funds if they provided Medicaid coverage to children from families whose income was under 150 percent of the Federal poverty level. This would mean coverage for a family of four earning $30,000 per year. The bill also provided grant funds for States to reach out and enroll eligible children.
Although some States were slow to implement their programs, to date all 50 States, the District of Columbia, and the 5 territories have SCHIP programs in operation. The SCHIP program has been a tremendous success; the share of uninsured children has dropped from 23 percent to 15 percent of the population since 1997. Today, more than 4 million low-income children who would otherwise be uninsured have access to doctors, immunizations, and preventative health care through SCHIP. Since 1997, enrollment has steadily increased to the point that 6.2 million children are currently covered.
Rhode Island's program has also been a success story. Since the program began on October 1, 1997, that State has enrolled 25,573 uninsured children. The State has also expanded its income eligibility requirement to cover additional low-income families. One reason for this great success is the SCHIP program's flexibility in benefit structure
and design. States are allowed to expand eligibility levels, cover parents of children on SCHIP, and in some cases childless adults. Rhode Island has utilized this flexibility to develop innovative strategies to address its uninsured.
One example of this innovation was Rhode Island's recognition of the importance of covering families. Studies cited by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured show that parents are more likely to enroll their children in SCHIP if the entire family is covered. Parents who have the proper health care coverage are more likely to stay healthy and avoid missed days at work. The same is true of their children; preventative screenings and immunizations will allow them to remain healthy, avoid expensive hospitalizations, and stay in school.
States may appeal to the Secretary of Health and Human Services for waivers to expand their program beyond current law requirements. Along with 15 other States, Rhode Island has a waiver that allows it to use SCHIP funds to cope with the growing number of uninsured. States such as Arizona, Idaho, Oregon, Minnesota, New Mexico, and Virginia have similar waivers.
We have a growing crisis with the number of uninsured in this country. Estimates place the number of uninsured at 45 million, up from 41 million a few years ago. We should reward States that use innovative approaches with their SCHIP programs to expand coverage. Until comprehensive solutions are found to help States fill the coverage gaps, we should not penalize them for taking advantage of existing resources and programs.
To this end, I have been proud to support legislation that maintained funding for the SCHIP program and reallocated funding to coverage- expanding States. In 2003 I was the lead Republican on legislation introduced by Senator Rockefeller to keep $2.7 billion in the program until the end of fiscal year 2004 and reallocate funds to other States through fiscal year 2005. This bill also included a provision I fought for that is important to States like Rhode Island. It allows States with expansive Medicaid Programs that covered uninsured children prior to SCHIP's enactment to use 20 percent of SCHIP funds to cover these children. This is significant since SCHIP provides a higher Federal match than Medicaid. States that did the right thing by covering pre- SCHIP children were being penalized by not receiving the higher match.
In closing, I thank Senators Rockefeller and Hatch for holding a hearing on SCHIP and honoring its tremendous accomplishments over the past 10 years. The SCHIP program has been an integral part of our health care safety net. As we turn to reauthorization and the challenges facing the program in fiscal year 2007, I look forward to working with the bipartisan coalition whose vision created the program. We must work together to keep SCHIP strong so that the progress and the innovations made with the program will not be lost.
