{"id":7756,"date":"2017-12-22T18:54:53","date_gmt":"2017-12-22T18:54:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=7756"},"modified":"2017-12-22T18:54:53","modified_gmt":"2017-12-22T18:54:53","slug":"texas-u-s-families-still-waiting-for-childrens-health-funding","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/?p=7756","title":{"rendered":"Texas, U.S. Families Still Waiting for Children\u2019s Health Funding"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"gr-60594-1-1\"<\/a>

About 400,000 children in Texas could lose health coverage if Congress fails to renew the Children\u2019s Health Insurance Program. Photo: PeopleImages\/Getty Images<\/p><\/div>\n

by Mark Richardson<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

AUSTIN, Texas<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 Almost 9 million families \u2013 400,000 in Texas alone \u2013 are anxiously waiting to hear if their children will have health insurance in 2018 and beyond.<\/p>\n

Congress has passed a two-week, stop-gap budget to avoid a government shutdown, but again failed to fund the\u00a0Children\u2019s Health Insurance Program<\/a>\u00a0(CHIP). That leaves Texas and many other states with only enough money to pay for coverage for a couple more months.<\/p>\n

Anne Dunkelberg, associate director at the Center for Public Policy Priorities, said the program\u2019s future is dependent on a Congress that can\u2019t seem to agree on much of anything.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know that there is a plan for another vote in Congress on December 22 \u2013 so right before Christmas \u2013 for a so-called continuing resolution that will cover a bunch of things, including CHIP,\u201d Dunkelburg said. \u201cNow, whether that\u2019s going to be a five-year fix or a two-year fix, or another one-month, we don\u2019t know yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

CHIP was created with bipartisan support in 1997, and Congress has renewed its funding several times since then. But lawmakers let an October 1 deadline to re-fund the program pass, and other than authorizing short-term extensions for the first few states that run out of money, there are currently no funding proposals.<\/p>\n

Dunkelberg said the uncertainty has parents, program administrators and health care providers on edge.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have to give parents some warning if you\u2019re going to shut the program down,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, if we had thought that we were not able to cover kids in February, we would have had to mail the parents letters before Christmas warning them about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

She added there is very little Texas officials can, or will, do if Congress fails to act.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have been talking about what they could do to fill short gaps so that you wouldn\u2019t have the crazy situation of shutting down the program for a month and then, having to go to all the expense to start it up again,\u201d Dunkelberg said. \u201cBut, if Congress were to just decide not to fund CHIP, we do not have support at this point from our leadership to replace it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dunkelberg said CHIP mostly serves working families who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford marketplace coverage through the Affordable Care Act.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Mark Richardson AUSTIN, Texas\u00a0\u2013 Almost 9 million families \u2013 400,000 in Texas alone \u2013 are anxiously waiting to hear if their children will have health insurance in 2018 and beyond. Congress has passed a two-week, stop-gap budget to avoid a government shutdown, but again failed to fund the\u00a0Children\u2019s Health Insurance Program\u00a0(CHIP). That leaves Texas […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7757,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-state"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7758,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7756\/revisions\/7758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/losfresnosnews.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}