Alabama to end enrollment in children's insurance program on New Year's Day (al.com)

[eppur_se_muova]

Updated Dec 19, 10:41 AM; Posted Dec 19, 10:28 AM

By Amy Yurkanin
[e-mail]

A program that provides insurance for the children of low-income families will stop enrollment on Jan. 1, 2018 and end completely a month later, according to the Alabama Department of Health.

If Congress does not renew funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which expired on Sept. 30, about 84,000 children in Alabama risk losing health insurance. The state will have to find funding for another 77,000 children insured under Medicaid through the CHIP program. Nationally, about 9 million children receive coverage through CHIP, and many states plan to shutter the program if funding runs out.

In Alabama, the program funded by CHIP is known as ALL Kids. Families with incomes of up to 312 percent of the federal poverty limit can qualify if they don't have access to affordable insurance. Families pay $52 or $104 a year to cover children under the age of 19, depending on income, plus small co-pays for sick visits.

"These are middle income working Alabama families," said Cathy Caldwell, director of the Bureau of Children's Health Insurance Programs for the Alabama Department of Public Health.

Caldwell said ALL Kids has existed in Alabama since 1998 and has proved to be a very popular and successful program. When the program started, about 20 percent of children in Alabama lacked health insurance. That number is now 2.4 percent - the best in the South.
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more: http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/2017/12/alabama_to_end_all_kids_enroll.html

[Eliot Rosewater]

1. Murderers.

[guillaumeb]

2. Merry Christmas, Alabama, from the GOP.

Recommended.

[RKP5637]

3. As Alabama falls further down the slippery slope. n/t

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Note that last sentence -- the best in the South.

Repugs don't want AL to get better, so AL kids had to be smacked down.

[bronxiteforever]

5. They will drinking and laughing tonite in Washington.

They could give a rats tuckus about children. Especially sick ones.

[PdxSean]

6. When will Alabama tire of being 47th in the nation for health care.

Seems like a basic, human instinct to want your child to have health care.

[Elwood P Dowd]

8. This is on the repukes in Washington, not Alabama.

Alabama had a program called ALL Kids that had reduced the number of uninsured kids from 20% to 2.4%. The program was funded by CHIPS, and the repukes in Congress won't fund it anymore.

[Pachamama]

7. Disgusting....

Republicans are disgusting. This take from the needy to give to the greedy tax rape bill is disgusting...