Children’s health care program gets brief reprieve in Virginia
Congress approved short-term additional funding for CHIP in December, and some states are still waiting to hear how the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services will allocate funds, according to Virginia’s Department of Medical Assistance Services.
The U.S. House has passed a bill — known as the HEALTHY KIDS Act — that would fund CHIP by increasing Medicare premiums for high-income beneficiaries and cut public health funding.
“We needed to fix the problem right in front of us, which was losing CHIP,” said 5th District Rep. Tom Garrett, R-Buckingham, who voted in favor of the bill. “We can’t take Medicare money away long-term, but we did what we had to do in the short-term.”
Garrett said he was whole-heartedly in favor of extending CHIP, and expressed frustration at the slow-moving Senate process.
The Senate version, the KIDS Act, was proposed by Sen. Orrin Hatch. Kaine said he hopes senators will vote in favor of Hatch’s bill and reconcile it with the House version by Jan. 19.
Kaine declined to share specifics for how he believes the program extension should be funded, but said he thought differences between the bills could be hashed out in committee.
On Friday, the Congressional Budget Office scored the Senate version of the bill, and said it would probably cost $800 million overall — much cheaper than a previously projected $8 billion, as children shift health care from CHIP and to ACA marketplaces ... READ MORE