October 6, 2009
Dear Partners,
This alert includes information about a national children's health insurance summit, a Senate Finance Committee amendment that maintains CHIP and Medicaid coverage for children, and affordability protections in the House and Senate health reform bills.
CMS Children's Health Insurance Summit
The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is hosting a national children's health insurance summit to discuss recruitment and retention tactics to increase enrollment in CHIP and Medicaid. State and local organizations are invited to attend.
CMS National Children's Health Insurance Summit
Date: November 4-6, 2009
Location: Chicago Marriott Downtown
540 N. Michigan Avenue
Chicago, Illinois
To learn more about the conference and RSVP, please click here.
Senate Finance Committee Bill: Rockefeller Amendment
This past Friday the Senate Finance Committee completed marking up its health reform bill. After the Committee votes on the bill, it will be merged with the Senate HELP bill and then go to the Senate floor for a full vote. During the mark up process, the Senate Finance Committee approved an amendment from Senator Jay Rockefeller (D - WV) that preserves the CHIP program in its current form and maintains existing Medicaid and CHIP coverage for children through at least 2019. This amendment was substantively revised from its original version. To view the language of the revised Rockefeller amendment, please click here.
The Rockefeller amendment would require states to maintain income eligibility levels for children currently enrolled in Medicaid and CHIP and would allow states to expand these eligibility levels at any time. The CHIP benefit package and cost-sharing rules would continue as under current law, with states beginning to receive a higher CHIP match rate in 2014. However, CHIP would still have to be reauthorized in 2013 and a new funding structure would have to be established.
The Senate Finance Committee voted 13-8 to accept Senator Rockefeller's amendment. Senator Olympia Snowe (R - ME) joined all of the Democratic Members of the Committee to vote in favor of the amendment (except for Senator Wyden (D - OR), who voted "present"). We are pleased that the Committee has demonstrated such strong support for CHIP and recognized the need to build on successful programs that provide children with comprehensive benefits and strong cost-sharing protections.
This amendment replaces the provisions in the Chairman's mark that guarantee an EPSDT "wrap" for all children up to 250% FPL. While we know some NEACH partners have expressed concern about wraps, the benefits of EPSDT are clearly important to children.
We hope the final health reform bill will work to protect and cover more children by building on programs that work-like CHIP and Medicaid-and including important protections like guaranteed EPSDT benefits.
ACTION STEP
Please contact your senators and ask them to reach out to Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D - NV) and urge him to include the Rockefeller CHIP amendment and the EPSDT provisions from the original Chairman's mark in the final Senate bill.
Click here for contact information for the New England Delegation.
Affordability
We know that children benefit when families have access to affordable health coverage. Community Catalyst has been working hard to make sure that the health reform bills being debated are affordable for families. We recently released two new documents that examine the affordability provisions in the House and Senate bills. Take a look at our comparison of the Senate Finance and HELP affordability provisions and a similar chart for the House proposals.
ACTION STEP
Please contact your Delegation Members and urge them to weigh in with Congressional leadership about the need to protect and strengthen affordability provisions in the health reform bills.
Click here for contact information for the New England Delegation.
As always, please feel free to contact me directly with questions (617-275-2929, arosenthal@communitycatalyst.org).
Sincerely,
Amy Rosenthal
Project Director
