Jeff Bingaman: “let me also go to one other issue which I think is important to deal with, another shortfall in this legislation, and…”

“let me also go to one other issue which I think is important to deal with, another shortfall in this legislation, and that is the failure of the program to provide dental coverage. According to the Children's Dental Health Project, of the 4 million children born each year in the United States, more than a quarter of them will have cavities by the time they are toddlers, and more than half will have cavities by the time they reach second grade. This is concentrated in low-income rural children who suffer disproportionately from these problems. I believe strongly the Children's Health Insurance Program should be expanded to cover dental care for children across this country, low-income children. This is something we are not able to do as part of this legislation, but I hope we can revisit this issue before final action is taken. A final issue I wanted to discuss relates to important improvements in legislation I hope we can make for legal immigrant children and legal pregnant women. Under current law, these individuals are prohibited from receiving most CHIP or Medicaid coverage for the first 5 years they are resident in the United States on a legal basis. Very often these children and these legal pregnant women, U.S. citizen children I point out, will become eligible for CHIP and Medicaid. It is counterproductive to prevent these legal immigrants from accessing services at the time they become legal residents of our country.”