U.S. House Passes Bill to Expand Children’s Health Insurance Program
[Posted 09/27/07]

The U.S. House of Representatives on Tuesday approved a bill that would expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) to cover 10 million poor children at a cost of $35 billion over five years. The expansion would be financed by a 61-cent increase in the federal tobacco tax.

The program, which currently provides insurance for 1.1 million children in California and 6.6 million nationwide, expires next week. If the program isn’t extended, millions of children could – at least temporarily – lose their health insurance.

The Senate is expected to vote on the compromise bill by the end of the week. President Bush has threatened to veto this legislation.

 The U.S. House earlier this month passed a bill that would have not only reauthorized the SCHIP program, but also stopped the 15 percent physician pay cut. Additionally, it would have updated California’s geographic payment localities and prevented any geographic payment reductions for three years. The Senate, however, passed a scaled-down version of the House bill, without the Medicare provisions.

CMA will continue to work with congressional leaders to stop the impending payment cuts before they take effect January 1. Senate leadership has committed to adopt Medicare physician payment reform legislation before the end of the year.

Contact: Elizabeth McNeil, 415/882-3376 or emcneil@cmanet.org.