email from Hutchison on SCHIP

Thank you for contacting me regarding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP). I appreciate your thoughts and comments on this issue.

SCHIP was created to provide health care to low-income children who do not qualify for Medicaid and whose guardians cannot afford private health insurance. The program is financed both by the federal government and the states. States are given flexibility to create their own eligibility requirements for the program. As of December 2006, 6.9 million children, including 320,000 from Texas, were enrolled in SCHIP.

Access to quality medical services is critical to the health and development of children, which is why I have been committed to reauthorizing the SCHIP program. As the details of the reauthorization continue to be negotiated, I am persistent in my efforts to ensure that health coverage for low-income children remains the number one goal of the program.

On August 2, 2007, H.R. 976, the Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2007, passed the Senate. President Bush vetoed the reauthorization on October 3, 2007. A subsequent bill reauthorizing SCHIP, H.R. 3963, was passed by the Senate on October 31, 2007. Unfortunately, this legislation is also expected to be vetoed by President Bush.

I voted for each version of the legislation to reauthorize SCHIP, H.R. 976 and H.R. 3963, because it benefits low-income children in many ways. The current bill allocates $35.4 billion to the program and covers an additional 4 million children who are eligible for SCHIP but not currently enrolled. More importantly, no children currently receiving coverage under SCHIP would lose health insurance. The bill also creates new options for states to subsidize employer-sponsored group health coverage to encourage continued enrollment in private insurance plans. Specifically, both H.R. 976 and H.R. 3963 ensured that the $1.012 billion dollars in unspent Texas SCHIP funds could remain in our state instead of being redistributed by the federal government to other states' SCHIP programs. These funds are desperately needed in Texas to stem the rising number of uninsured children in the state.

Congress has the important task of working on a bipartisan basis to pass an SCHIP reauthorization bill that will be supported by the President. I recently co-authored a letter that was signed by all Republican Senators who voted for the vetoed legislation under H.R. 976, stating a commitment to reauthorizing the SCHIP program without unnecessary delay. As new SCHIP legislation is presented to the Senate, I will keep your views about this important program in mind.

I appreciate hearing from you, and I hope that you will not hesitate to keep in touch on any issue of concern to you.


Sincerely,
Kay Bailey Hutchison