Nathan Deal: “There is no provision in this bill that requires States to go out and make the extra effort to enroll children who are…”

“There is no provision in this bill that requires States to go out and make the extra effort to enroll children who are eligible for either Medicaid or the current SCHIP program under its current authorization of up to 200 percent of poverty but are still unenrolled. In fact, it is estimated that about a quarter of the children who are eligible are simply not enrolled in the current program. These are the children that are at the lowest levels of poverty but are not covered. They should be the part that are our first incentive. The Republican version of this incentivizes States to take that extra effort to enroll those children first before they started going up the poverty level and enrolling children in higher income families, many of whom already have private insurance.”