Lincoln Chafee: “I am offering an amendment with Senator Rockefeller and Senator Jeffords to ensure that the children's health insurance…”

“I am offering an amendment with Senator Rockefeller and Senator Jeffords to ensure that the children's health insurance block grant, which is what we provided for from the Finance Committee, provides adequate health coverage for children and that it is affordable for most low-income families. Let me say I am very pleased in this package we have $24 billion, $24 billion set aside to provide health insurance coverage for some of the 10 million children in our Nation who are currently uninsured. I thank the chairman of the committee for helping us in many respects in connection with how this health care money is dispensed. There are two areas which remain of concern to me, namely what benefits are we going to provide to these children and how much are we going to require their parents to pay toward health insurance; in other words, deductibles and copayments. Under the Finance Committee bill, it provides that the benefits should be actuarially equivalent to the benefits provided under the Federal Employees Health Benefits Plan. This, of course, is not a single plan. It is a menu of plans that Federal employees may choose from. These plans are designed to meet the needs of adult Federal workers and retirees, not children. Stating that the benefits must be actuarial equivalent, which means the same dollar value, does not spell out what benefits the children will get. Children could be denied critical benefits, such as vision and hearing care.”