ALEXANDRIA, VA – Today, the Senate Finance Committee passed bipartisan legislation to renew the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) by a vote of 17-4. First Focus President Bruce Lesley released the following statement in reaction to the bill, as amended:

“While this legislation fails to meet the commitment that the Senate made earlier this year to provide $50 billion to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program, the bill that was passed out of committee today includes several important provisions that will improve coverage for our nation’s uninsured children.

In terms of the policy changes being made to this legislation, this bill is moving forward in the right direction.

First, the committee added language for a demonstration program to test Express Lane enrollment, which will reduce the bureaucratic red tape in Medicaid and CHIP that prevents numbers of children from getting access to the health services they need. This will provide an opportunity to enroll a significant portion of the uninsured children who live in families already receiving benefits through programs such as Food Stamps, free or reduced price school lunch, and/or nutrition programs for women, infants and children.

In addition, I am pleased that the committee included $200 million for grants to improve the availability of dental services and to strengthen dental coverage for children covered under CHIP. While this is not the ‘wrap-around’ policy for dental services that would counter the inadequate private sector coverage for children in low-income families, it is clearly a step in the right direction to ensure that there are no more stories such as that of Deamonte Driver, whose uncared for toothache led to his death.

In addition, I am heartened to see provisions that provide for significant outreach and enrollment efforts for the 5-6 million children who are eligible but unenrolled in either Medicaid or SCHIP, as well as provisions to provide states with critically important incentives to improve and expand coverage to children. Further, the inclusion of coverage of pregnant women to improve the healthy start of children will help curb the infant mortality problem in the United States. Also, measures reducing the negative impact of citizenship and identity requirements on children who are U.S. citizens are a step in the right direction.

Thankfully, an amendment by Senator Ken Salazar was passed which ensured that adequate payments are made to community health centers so that funding intended for 6 million low-income children treated in community health centers is not diverted to supplement potential shortfalls in funding from SCHIP.

However, there are still aspects of the bill which are troubling for the 9 million uninsured children in the United States. Paramount of these is the allocation of only $35 billion, which does not even provide funds sufficient to reach even half of those children who currently lack health coverage. After all, our goal of $50 billion represents just one-third of one percent of the entire federal budget. Providing this extremely small fraction of the budget would make extremely large strides towards covering American children

Unfortunately, as this bill moves to the Senate floor, the biggest threat to the health and well-being of our nation’s children remains the Administration’s veto threats. It is wrong for the Administration to continue their attacks on what is the most successful children’s program in over a decade.”