Oct. 1, 2004 -- The deadline ran out last night on more than $1 billion in f
Oct. 1, 2004 -- The deadline ran out last night on more than $1 billion in federal money slated for children's health, forcing the cash to revert to the U.S. Treasury instead of going for low-income programs.
Congress failed to act to keep $1.1 billion targeted for the State Children's Health Insurance Plan, or SCHIP. The program provides health coverage for approximately 6 million U.S. children from families living at 200% of the federal poverty level.
The move incensed some lawmakers who lobbied for a measure that would send the money to poorer states facing shortfalls in the program. But a lack of agreement on whether the money is best spent in those states versus using it to expand enrollment to cover more uninsured children meant that the funds were no longer available to states after midnight on Sept. 30.
Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W. Va.) says that 200,000 children in seven states would lose out on health coverage without the extra money.
"These children and their families were depending on us in Congress, and we've let them down," he says in a statement.
Republican congressional leaders and the Bush administration opposed a reshuffling of the money. They argue that overall, states are projected to spend only about half of $11 billion available to them for children's health programs in the 2005 fiscal year, which starts today.
Officials from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services also said that it would use its authority to send $660 million of money left over from 2002 accounts to states with funding gaps.
"No state will be left short and no child will lose coverage due to a shortfall, period," says HHS Secretary Tommy G. Thompson.
The Bush administration wants to spend this year's left over money on outreach programs to expand SCHIP enrollment, Thompson wrote in a letter to lawmakers. Approximately 5 million U.S. children eligible for SCHIP are not enrolled, according to federal figures.
Rockefeller and a bipartisan group of senators announced that they will continue attempts to force Congress to send the $1.1 billion to states before lawmakers reach a scheduled adjournment in mid-October.
Where the Money Goes
Meanwhile, new data show a growing gap in health spending between children and the elderly. One study published by economists at the University of Pennsylvania concludes that the government spent approximately $25.8 billion on Medicaid and SCHIP health programs for children in 2000 but spent more than eight times that on Medicaid and Medicare coverage for seniors.
At the same time, per capita social welfare and health spending grew 20% faster for the elderly than for children between 1980 and 2000, the researchers say.
Some analysts point to the difference as evidence that the U.S. is not spending enough to deliver health care to children. Lisa Simpson, a health policy researcher from the University of South Florida, points out that the U.S. has higher infant mortality rates than 24 other countries and lower immunization rates than 67 others.
"Overall children are in worse health in this country than in comparable other countries," she told an audience at a Capitol Hill briefing sponsored by the Alliance for Health Reform.
