CHILDREN HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAM

Children health insurance program

Children Health Insurance Program

Introduction

Medicaid has long been the welfare program for the poor, providing medical and long-term care to more than sixteen percent of the population. Medicaid has expanded to cover fifty seven million people in 2005 (Feldstein). The federal government spends billions on the Medicaid system. The federal dollars that each state receives assist local states to provide a less expensive approach to providing access to medical care. One such program was created in 1997, the State Children's Health protection Program provided health coverage to more than seven million children. The recent bill approved in early February of this year by President Obama to renew the State Children's wellbeing protection Program has brought care to millions of children in the United States.

The new bill is expected to insure four million additional children to the program. The signed Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009, officially extending the successful program through 2013 and provided and additional 32.8 billion in funds(The Nation's Health). The previous presidential administration vetoed prior bills that were in favor of renewing the Children's Health Program. The lack of concern for families and health insurance were not a top priority for previous administrations. The demand for such a program comes at a time when many families have lost jobs due to the state of the economy.

Body: Discussion and Analysis

The State Children's wellbeing protection Program (SCHIP) was marked into regulation as part of Title XXI of the 1997 Balanced allowance Act. The aim of the legislation was to increase the insurance coverage of children in the United States by expanding eligibility for public insurance to children in families earning too much to specify for Medicaid yet earning too little to pay for private health insurance. Touted as the biggest expansion in health insurance since the enactment of Medicaid in 1965, the SCHIP legislation apportioned more than $40 billion in government matching capital over 10 years starting in fiscal year 1998. States are permitted to use these capital to elaborate Medicaid eligibility, to evolve new insurance programs, and increase outreach for children already suitable for public coverage.

The efficacy and cost of public insurance expansions count critically on two factors: program take-up and the possible substitution from personal to public coverage, i.e., “crowd-out”. Anumber of latest investigations find low take-up rates for individuals who became eligible for public insurance through the Medicaid expansions of the late 1980s and early 1990s (Cutler and Gruber, 1996; Dubay and Kenney, 1997; Shore-Sheppard, 1997; Yazici and Kaestner, 2000; Blumberg et al., 2000; Ham and Shore-Sheppard, 2001 and enterprise enterprise card and Shore-Sheppard, 2003).1 Previous enquiries furthermore propose that the Medicaid expansions aided to a down turn in private insurance, though the approximated magnitude of this effect varies considerably.

Low take-up might be an even larger difficulty for SCHIP as many of the families made eligible for the program had little former experience with public insurance programs and, thus, may need good information about the ...