Campaign Action
States across the nation are eyeing their budgets—and their children's health programs—with trepidation, hoping they've got enough funding to last until Congress finally gets its act together and reauthorizes the program which expired at the end of September. Eleven states only have a few months of funding, and most states can only go through the winter with the funding they've got on hand. Alaska is one of them.
Denali KidCare administrator Barbara Hale said nonrenewal could prove costly for Alaska and many other states.
"For Alaska, if CHIP is not renewed, it becomes a serious budget issue," she said.
Through the Affordable Care Act in 2010, Alaska opted for an additional expansion of its Medicaid Program. Separately, the ACA also approved an additional 23 percentage point increase in federal funding specifically for CHIP. Alaska’s program is funded at 88 cents of federal funding to 12 cents of state general funding for every dollar spent on the program.
This could change if the program is left unfunded, Hale said. […]
If left unrenewed, Alaska's 2017 allotment will run out March 30, she said.
Every state has a horror story in the offing. Alaska's is the prospect of having to match Medicaid dollars for children 50-50 with federal funds, instead of the 88-12 they currently are paying. Like all the other states, it would have to make very difficult decisions about whether or not it drops needy children from the healthcare rolls.
It's nearly two weeks into the new fiscal year, nearly two weeks into the expiration of this vital program and so far it seems like the Republican Congress intends to continue with politics as usual, using the program as a political wedge to try to extract miserable concessions from the Democrats on other critical programs, like Puerto Rico assistance and public health funding. That fighting will resume after the next two weeks—the Senate is out this week, and the House out next week, because Republican leadership sure doesn't feel any urgency to act in these mounting crises.
