In the never-ending “meanwhile” that the Children's Health Insurance Program has become:
Several states and the Trump administration are fervently searching for stopgap measures to keep insurance for low-income children while Congress debates spending for the national program. […]
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has a national redistribution fund that has unused CHIP funding from previous years. CMS is working on a month-to-month basis to send redistribution funds to states that request it.
Five states have received redistribution funding: Minnesota, Arizona, Washington, California, and Oregon, according to an October report from the congressional advisory board Medicare and Chip Payment Advisory Commission.
Arizona and Minnesota are expected to run out of funds by the end of this year, MACPAC projected. Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia are expected to run out in the first three months of 2018, 19 states in the third quarter, and two in the fourth quarter.
Except that Congress is not debating spending for the program. The House Republicans passed a version of the bill that can't pass the Senate because it's full of poison pills and Senate Republicans are busy deciding to take health insurance away from 13 million people in order to give tax cuts to the rich. In fact, the person in charge of getting CHIP funding to the Senate floor, Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah, spent the last week of his committee's time on tax cuts. He had a total hissy fit when a Democrat pointed out to him that maybe they should be taking care of the kids, instead.
It's looking like this isn't just disregard for children. It's looking like they're planning to toss kids into the same continuing resolution they'll have to pass by the middle of December to keep government open. They'll try to force the House's poison pills on Senate Democrats—telling them to pass this or the government shuts down and sick kids don't get care. Because they are monsters who care more about corporate and rich people's tax cuts than they care about children.
Jam the phone lines of House and Senate Republicans. Call (202) 224-3121, and tell them to stop holding kids hostage and to pass a clean funding bill for CHIP and community health centers.