The Oct. 3 editorial "Children in need" urged Congress to protect funding for the bipartisan Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), but it missed one critical point: Congress must approve four more years of funding this year.
Congressional delay puts children’s coverage at risk. Delay affects state budgets and contracts with private CHIP providers. This undermines insurers and pediatricians, hospitals and other providers and puts children’s health care at risk.
Prolonged delay could lead states to erect barriers to coverage or care. When California's CHIP program faced a state funding shortfall in 2009, more than 100,000 eligible children were wait-listed. A year after the waiting list was lifted, nearly 50,000 still hadn't gotten CHIP coverage. Taken to national scale, it's easy to see that congressional delay could be "a nightmare," as Alabama's CHIP director testified at a congressional hearing last month.
My group, First Focus, and the Children’s Hospital Association, the Children’s Dental Health Project, the Children’s Defense Fund and Families USA urge Congress to act this year to protect CHIP and children’s health.
Bruce Lesley, Washington
The writer is president of First Focus.
