Defying Slump, 13 States Insure More Children

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Defying Slump, 13 States Insure More Children

Stuart Isett for The New York Times

Sarah McIntyre, 8, with her mother, Vicky, now has subsidized government health insurance. Sarah, who had cysts removed from her lungs, uses an inhaler for asthma medication.

By KEVIN SACK
Published: July 18, 2009


Despite budgets ravaged by the recession, at least 13 states have invested millions of dollars this year to cover 250,000 more children with subsidized government health insurance.

The expansions have come in the five months since Congress and President Obama used the reauthorization of the Children’s Health Insurance Program to vastly increase its funding and encourage states to increase enrollment. Although the federal government covers the vast majority of the cost, states set their own eligibility levels and must decide whether to spend state money in order to draw even more from Washington.

In addition to increasing income eligibility levels, three states are dropping requirements that legal immigrants wait five years before joining the program, a step newly permitted by the federal legislation. Others have extended coverage to pregnant women or streamlined enrollment and eligibility procedures.

The states’ willingness to spend, even under excruciating budget pressures, is a measure of the support for expanding health care coverage to the uninsured as Congress and the administration intensify their negotiations over a new federal health care bill.

But a number of states decided that their depleted coffers did not allow them to insure additional children, even as a minority partner. Several either deferred previously scheduled eligibility expansions or saw their legislatures defeat efforts to broaden coverage.

In Arizona, only opposition from Gov. Jan Brewer, a Republican, prevented lawmakers in her own party from narrowing eligibility. And in California, where Democratic legislators and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, are struggling to close the country’s largest budget gap, the state on Friday imposed a freeze on new enrollments.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/us/19chip.html