Maria Smith
Cumberland Times-News
October 04, 2007 11:58 am
—
CUMBERLAND - A health insurance plan with a $500 deductible for one child between the ages of 6 and 17 may run a family $93 a month.
And that's the minimum.
Bump the deductible down to $100 and the monthly cost hits $148.
Several hundred local families are facing that possibility if the president's veto of a bill expanding the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, stands. If the program is eliminated, the numbers potentially could climb into the thousands.
Originally created in 1997, the joint federal and state program offers low-cost health insurance to children in low-income families. It has provided coverage to about 6.6 million children while the expanded coverage would bring in another 4 million.
In a bipartisan vote, the Senate and the House last week agreed to reauthorize the program and increase spending for it from about $5 billion to $12 billion each year for the next five years.
That expanded program would reach another 4 million children nationally and is designed to help families who fall in the gap - those who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to purchase private insurance.
Saying the increase is too much, Bush vetoed the bill Wednesday.
Earleen Beckman, program director for the eligibility unit for Maryland CHIP in Garrett County, said about 2,500 Garrett children are enrolled in MCHIP. That's a large percentage of children, she said, considering the county has a population of about 30,000.
"It's a wonderful insurance program," she said. "It covers physicians visits, labs and X-rays that are required, prescriptions within limits and even, in Maryland, we have dental insurance.
"Without it, most of these children would not have insurance coverage," Beckman said, noting the majority of MCHIP children come from working families who don't earn enough to afford insurance.
In West Virginia, the numbers are much less in Hampshire and Mineral counties at 261 and 263 children, respectively, but the result is the same.
"These kids would have nothing," Sue Radko, family support supervisor for the state Department of Health and Human Resources, said if the program folded.
A message left for the MCHIP program in Allegany County was not returned.
Beckman, however, said she's been notified by the state that a congressional resolution gives the program a temporary extension allowing it to continue as is until November. The hope is Congress and the president will reach an agreement by then.
In Maryland, the bill would provide funding for 101,000 children currently enrolled in the program and then expand it to include another 42,000.
Congressman Roscoe Bart-lett, a Republican representing Maryland's 6th District, was the only Maryland representative to side with the president.
Bartlett, who voted to create the original program a decade ago, said Wednesday that both Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer "are out of touch with the lives of most Americans."
"Only Democratic congressional leaders could demand that a family earning $82,000 a year should qualify for their expanded SCHIP program that Republicans created to help children of the working poor and simultaneously call that same family rich and force them to pay the AMT, Alternative Minimum Tax," Bartlett said via a release. "It just goes to show that what Democrats really want is to have the government control how to spend the money that American taxpayers earn."
In the Senate, Maryland's Barbara Mikulski and Benjamin Cardin, both Democrats, feel otherwise. Like Bartlett, Mikulski voted for the original program, but she supports its expansion.
Cardin said Wednesday he disagrees with the president's stance that the expansion is too expensive.
"It is estimated that we will spend $650 billion in Iraq in five years, yet the president says we cannot afford $35 billion over five years for the health care of American children," he said. "One month of what we spend in Iraq would provide health care to 7.4 million American children. The president's priorities are wrong."
Mikulski has called on the president to fulfill his responsibility to American families as Congress has.
"This program fills the gap for children who might otherwise have to go without any health care at all," she said.
Both West Virginia senators, Democrats Robert Byrd and Jay Rockefeller, approved the expansion as well.
"I'm prepared to keep sending this bill back to him again and again until he finally does the right thing for our children," Rockefeller said via a news release.
Byrd has long been a supporter of the program and like Cardin, mentioned Iraq.
"Once again, President Bush has put funding the war in Iraq over funding critical priorities here at home," he said. "This president's priorities are completely out of whack. The president vetoes a bill to fund children's health needs in the same week he intends to ask Congress for $190 billion to fund his endless war in Iraq."
Byrd also pledged to work to override the veto.
Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican who represents West Virginia's 2nd District, has supported the program since she served in the state Legislature. She said it's something everyone can, and should, support.
Congressman Alan Mollohan, 1st District Democrat, said 60,000 children in West Virginia would have been helped had the bill not been vetoed.
He also echoed Byrd in his fight to override the veto. The program, he noted, was endorsed by 43 governors and would have helped millions of low-income children.
"If the president prevails, more than 20,300 West Virginia children will not be able to participate in the program and secure adequate health insurance," he said. "I believe the president's priorities here are misplaced and his veto is regrettable."
West Virginia Gov. Joe Manchin said in a press release that the state will continue to serve the qualified children while the issue is being resolved. WVCHIP expanded its program Jan. 1 to include eligibility for families living up to 220 percent of the federal poverty level. He said the program's board will consider the feasibility of 20 percent increments annually.
Maria Smith can be reached at msmith@times-news.com.
Copyright © 1999-2008 cnhi, inc.