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The Senate Finance Committee passed its Children's Health Insurance Program reauthorization bill Wednesday, four days too late for preventing the expiration of the program. They possibly acted in time to avert too much disaster, depending on whether Majority Leader Mitch McConnell decides to prioritize getting it to the floor and that the Senate can fight off poison pills the House intends to include in their version.
Because passage is probably inevitable, lawmakers from both parties are lining up to attach pet provisions to it, such as increasing federal aid to hospitals or helping insurers curb growing premiums. Senators withheld amendments Wednesday to advance the process a step, but they could renew their efforts when the legislation reaches the Senate floor.
"I'm getting sick of these guys trying to hang every dog-gone Tom, Dick and Harry" proposal onto the bill "because they know it's going to pass," Finance Chairman Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, told a reporter afterward.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has not said when the full Senate will consider the measure. The chamber takes a recess next week and the House takes one the following week, ensuring no final congressional action until at least late October.
That suggests that Hatch might fight the House, which is working on its own version of the bill Wednesday, planning to attach some pretty horrible stuff to the bill, including Medicare means-testing and slashing public health prevention funding in the Affordable Care Act. They also want to cut funding to disproportionate share hospitals—the hospitals that provide the bulk of the care for the uninsured and poor. Because Republicans are horrible.
The good news is that both bills would extend funding for five years, which would limit the amount of political gamesmanship Republicans could inflict on the nations' poor children. There are other good things the two chambers agree on—maintaining an "express lane" to allow for streamlined applications with agencies administering food and cash assistance, continuing demonstration projects, and outreach and enrollment funding.
The more bad news is that after the Republican Congress totally blew off the deadline, putting the program in serious jeopardy in a number of states, there's two weeks of recess coming up between the two chambers and further delays in getting this done.