We're now 68 days into the Children's Health Insurance Program limbo created by the Republican Congress' refusal to pass funding. Every day, states are getting closer to having to start kicking kids off. It won't surprise you to find out the issue hasn't come up in the White House. Meanwhile, Republicans in Congress have made CHIP funding take a back burner to their big tax giveaway.
Physician Arthur "Tim" Garson Jr., has a warning to them about doing that.
As Congress nears the finish line of reforming the tax code, it appears to have made the choice to put the issue of sick children on the backburner until tax legislation has been resolved.
As a pediatric cardiologist, I know firsthand: This is a risky game to play. […]
But now, we've entered new territory. Texas officials have said they may need to close down the CHIP program by January if Congress fails to renew it. Texas already has more uninsured people than any other state. Without CHIP, our state’s count of uninsured will rise by another 15 percent.
These are staggering numbers that represent real people, For example, I first met one of my absolute favorite patients, a five-year-old, when I began treating her for a congenital heart condition. She went into cardiac arrest three times the first night I encountered her. I thought she was going to die, but amazingly she survived, and I was able to see her grammar school graduation and later her high school graduation. She died suddenly at age 19, after she stopped taking expensive medication when state-funded coverage ran out. Programs like CHIP and Medicaid are real lifelines to people whose very lives depend on them to function as intended. […]
If CHIP is stopped, government workers who administer it will find other work. It will take a long time to rebuild a program that functions well.
We're talking something like $14 billion a year to protect 9 million kids. That's compared to a $1.5 trillion tax giveaway to the Republican donor class. And this is the program that Utah Sen. Orrin Hatch so infamously said is in funding trouble "because we don't have money anymore."
We have the money for a massive tax boondoggle, Republicans say, but we don't have money to cover children who would otherwise fall through the cracks. Every day that passes in which this attitude prevails is a day that brings this program closer to disaster.
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.