What ’s CHIP Got To Do With It?

Children in US receive their health insurance from multiple sources: the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), Medicaid, employer-sponsored insurance (ESI), or a qualified health plan on the Marketplace. Each offering has different cost sharing and premium requirements, provider networks, coverage packages, and eligibility criteria. This creates a fragmented system of coverage for children and families, particularly for low- and moderate-income families, who often have children and parents enrolled in across separate coverage sources. Furthermore, this fragmentation leads to disparities in children’s coverage by coverage source. Shouldn’t all children benefit from cohesive and comprehensive coverage? CHIP was traditionally seen as a bipartisan program. However, over time, particularly with the passage of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the politics of CHIP have changed. The uncertain political footing for the program will play a role this summer with the future of children’s coverage up for debate again. CHIP funding is scheduled to expire on September 30, 2017. Additionally, the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission (MACPAC) reports that Arizona, California, DC, Minnesota, and North Carolina will run out of CHIP funding by December 2017 if Congress does not reauthorize the money for the program. More than half of states are projected to exhaust federal CHIP funds by March 2018 without reauthorization. That said, we can expect CHIP to be a key driver in...
Source: Health Affairs Blog - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Insurance and Coverage Medicaid and CHIP Source Type: blogs