Buried in the huge, intentionally complicated sellout bill, there is a little known provision that sneakily chops CHIP, (AGAIN)
Recent media on the cutting of CHIP
CHIP on chopping block again?
CHIP Provision In Health Bill Triggers Concern
In House Health Bill, Kids Play ‘Lottery of Geography’: Children's Health Advocates Fear Repercussions From Ending CHIP
CHIP on Chopping Block in House Health Reform Bill
Current Bill Drops Popular Children's Health Plan in 2014
CHIP is the program that has allowed poor working parents to bypass the increasingly amoral and dysfunctional insurance system and get affordable healthcare for their children, like every child gets in Canada.
Cutting CHIP represents a betrayal of many working parents
The House bill:
- Mandates that parents and nonparents buy private insurance plans. None are required to provide equal benefits to CHIP. Benefits will be nothing like CHIP. They will only pay a portion of costs, many will only pay above arbitrarily high deductibles, thousands of dollars.
- Moves most poor children into commercial insurance plans of uncertain quality.
- Deal to preserve CHIP until 2019 cancelled
- Despite costing $15 billion more to pay for 65% of the children's costs with private insurance, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill will be chopped.
- Private unsurance is designed to prevent care so many defer care worried about starvation or lack of money to pay for rent or food.
- it (Obama's free market "solution" to chop CHIP) represents an uncertain, risky situation for children. Parents will delay or not allow their children to get care if they risk homelessness for going to the doctor because they must pay up to 35% of the often unpredictable costs.
- A recent study showed that thousands of children die because of the uniquely American system of withholding care from the poor.
- CHIP appars to meet the criteria of being "too attractive" and so its banned.
From the Charleston West Virginia Gazette
"If the children were moved to private insurance, their parents would also pay significantly more in premiums and out-of-pocket expense, according to an actuarial study by financial consulting firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide. Using data from 17 states, researchers found that, at 175 to 225 percent of poverty, parents of CHIP children paid up to 2 percent of their child's treatment. If the same children were transferred to private plans, their parents would pay between 5 and 35 percent of the cost of care.
"Most of these parents are working people who are counting dollars," said Renate Pore, health care analyst for the West Virginia Center on Budget and Policy. Families eligible for CHIP make too much to be eligible for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private insurance, she said. "CHIP is the stronger coverage package, and we are very concerned about the idea that those kids would be moved over without some protection," said Bruce Lesley, director of First Focus, the national child advocacy group that commissioned the actuarial study.
The CHIP program includes developmental screening and preventative care that is not covered by most adult plans. It covers a wide range of services, including doctor and hospital visits, immunizations and prescriptions, tests and X-rays, diabetic care, and dental and vision care. It provides case management for children with special needs.
"There are many wonderful parts of the reform legislation, and many things in health care that need to be changed," Lesley said, "but this is one that should be left alone."