Jeff Bingaman: “today with Senators Domenici, Murray, Jeffords, Alexander, Cantwell, Akaka, Reed, Chafee, Leahy, Dodd, and Dayton we…”

“today with Senators Domenici, Murray, Jeffords, Alexander, Cantwell, Akaka, Reed, Chafee, Leahy, Dodd, and Dayton we introduce legislation entitled the ``Children's Health Equity Act of 2005.'' This legislation would extend provisions that were included in Public Laws #108-74 and 108-127 that amended the State Children's Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, to permit the states of Connecticut, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin to apply some of their enhanced SCHIP matching funds toward the coverage of certain children enrolling in Medicaid that were part of expansions of coverage to children through Medicaid in those 11 states prior to the enactment of SCHIP. As a article in the September/October 2004 issue of Health Affairs by Genevieve Kenney and Debbie Chang points out, when SCHIP was created, ``Inequities were . . . introduced across states because those that had already expanded Medicaid coverage to children could not receive the higher SCHIP matching rate for these children . . . [and this] meant that states that had been ahead of the curve in expanding Medicaid eligibility for children were penalized financially relative to states that expanded coverage after SCHIP.'' The article adds that ``additional cross-state inequities were introduced'' during the creation of SCHIP because three states had their prior expansions grandfathered in during the bill's consideration.…”