While the Affordable Care Act has sucked up all the oxygen for the last several months in Congress and in the media, the clock has been ticking down on the program that provides health care to nearly 9 million children in the United States. Funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) will expire on September 30 if Congress doesn't reauthorize it by then. The funding is as critical to states as it is to families because like Medicaid, which covers an additional 37.1 million children, CHIP is a federal-state program. States can't pick up those costs on their own and they've created their budgets with that money factored in, making quick action that much more critical.
There's strong bipartisan support for the program, but there's also a lot of gamesmanship tied up with it, because those little children make such a great hostage when a funding deadline is approaching. The bipartisan support means that CHIP will get funded, but the gamesmanship calls into question how it happens, what it's attached to, and whether Democrats and advocates succeed in securing long-term funding for it, making it no longer a regular hostage for the taking.
CHIP has historically been a bipartisan affair, and during a Senate Finance Committee hearing, lawmakers indicated there wouldn't be any major issues with reauthorizing the program.
"Personally, I'm optimistic about this committee's chances," said Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), the committee's ranking member. "It's important for Congress to take action soon. There's no kicking this can down the road with a short-term bill. And this cannot wait until December."
The sticking points are the duration of the reauthorization, whether any other measures will be attached and whether to continue enhanced federal matching funds that were first included in the Affordable Care Act.
Witnesses said a five-year funding extension would provide the most stability.
Wyden is pushing for that five-year reauthorization, as are children's health advocates, because there's so much uncertainty in healthcare markets, thanks to all the games Republicans and popular vote loser Donald Trump have been playing with Obamacare. A five-year extension would give families and states greater certainty. But certainty for critical programs like this isn't really what Republicans want, not when they can use them politically.
Taking this down to the wire, too, is part of the game playing, which Republican Orrin Hatch pretty much admits. "Some are justifiably concerned that, given the number of issues that are already before the committee," Hatch said, "there may not be time to give full and fair consideration to CHIP reforms prior to the expiration of federal funding." Being committee chairman, he has total control over that. It was his decision to leave this until the last minute, his decision to allow it to remain a political football.