Mike Levin: “I am proud that we have produced a bipartisan bill to continue to provide health care insurance to children of…”

“I am proud that we have produced a bipartisan bill to continue to provide health care insurance to children of low-income parents. The Children's Health Insurance Program, which we created 10 years ago, has been a great success, but it is set to expire on September 30. This bill to reauthorize and expand the program deserves our strong support. I urge the President to approve the bipartisan compromise my colleagues worked so hard to achieve and not to carry out his threat to veto a bill, a veto which could result in denying health care coverage to many uninsured children from working families. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 created a children's health insurance program under title XXI of the Social Security Act. This program allows states to insure children whose families are above Medicaid eligibility levels through block grants, and it allowed states flexibility in designing how CHIP would be implemented. Since 1997, CHIP has received about $40 billion in appropriations and has been widely successful. Currently, 6.6 million children are enrolled in CHIP. Seventy percent of those children came from families with incomes below 150 percent of the poverty level, and more than 90 percent were from families with incomes below 200 percent of the poverty level. CHIP coverage leads to better access to preventative and primary care services, better quality of care, better health outcomes and improved performance in school.”