Moms Of Faith

Yesterday our Congress passed the SECOND SCHIP bill, a revision of the one President Bush vetoed this month, with the votes standing at 265-142. Once again Bush has promised to use his veto power to squash this bill. The White House was quoted after the last veto as saying “This bill does not address in a meaningful way the concerns the president raised, and so he will veto it if it reaches his desk.” This bill would have expanded the current program by almost $35 million over the course of five years. The second bill would have tightened restrictions on illegal immigrants; would cap the income levels of families who qualify for SCHIP; and would prevent adults from being covered.
For those of you who wonder what all the fuss is about please allow me to break it down for you.
Schip is a national program in the United States that provides health insurance for families who earn too much money to qualify for Medicaid, yet cannot afford to buy private insurance. The program was created to address the growing number of children in the United States without health insurance. At its creation in 1997, SCHIP was the largest expansion of health insurance coverage for children in the United States since Medicaid began in the 1960s. SCHIP covered 6.9 million children at some point during Federal fiscal year 2006, and every state has an approved plan. States are given flexibility, and an enhanced match is paid to states. Some states use SCHIP funds to cover the parents of children receiving benefits from both SCHIP and Medicaid, pregnant women, and other adults. However, the program is already facing funding shortfalls in several states. Despite SCHIP, the number of uninsured children continues to rise, particularly among families that cannot qualify for SCHIP. An October 2007 study by the Vimo Research Group found that 68.7 percent of newly uninsured children were from families 200 percent above the federal poverty level.** *