WASHINGTON, DC – Thursday, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA) applauded Senate passage of legislation that will provide health care coverage for nearly 10 million children nationwide. By a vote of 68 to 31, the Senate passed the bipartisan Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) bill that reauthorizes $35 billion for the program which provides health insurance to children from low-income, working families. The funds will not only ensure coverage for the 6.6 million kids on CHIP today, it will expand coverage to another 3.3 million kids across the country, including nearly 35,000 in Washington state. However, President Bush has threatened to veto the bill. 

 

“This is a clear signal to the president that there’s strong bipartisan support in Congress and in the country for protecting and improving our children’s health,” said Cantwell. “This bill gives more kids across America a good healthy start on their futures.  More kids in Washington will be helped because for the first time our state will get its fair share of the program. The president's veto threat puts politics over children's health. I hope he'll sign this legislation when it comes to his desk.”

Through Cantwell’s seat on the Finance Committee, she was able to nearly triple the federal money Washington will get for qualified low-income kids and nearly quadruple money for these kids by 2012. 

 

For the first time since CHIP was created, Washington will have full access to its fair share of the program. 

CHIP’s rules have previously prevented Washington from using its allocation to cover the thousands of remaining uninsured low-income children who would have otherwise been eligible. 

  

For years, Cantwell has worked to prevent states from being punished for their own efforts to expand coverage to more children prior to the enactment of CHIP. When CHIP was created, Washington state was already covering children from families at up to 200 percent of the poverty level with Medicaid dollars. Washington has been forced to hand back almost $200 million—all of it money the state could have used to cover uninsured children. 

 

CHIP, created in 1997, allows Washington to use program funds to cover children from families living on 250 percent of the poverty level or less who were not already eligible for health coverage at the time of the program’s enactment. 

 

 

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