WASHINGTON - February 9 - U.S. Senators Russ Feingold (D-WI), Jeff Bingaman (D-NM), and Norm Coleman (R-MN) are working to make sure people currently enrolled in the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) continue to be covered. The bipartisan group of Senators wrote to the Senate Finance Committee urging it to support existing coverage for individuals currently enrolled in the program. As the Senate prepares to reauthorize SCHIP, several committee members are seeking to eliminate a provision that would allow adults to continue receiving health insurance coverage under SCHIP.

“SCHIP is critical to the thousands of Wisconsinites enrolled in BadgerCare, Wisconsin’s program to provide health care coverage for uninsured families,” Feingold said. “Eliminating coverage would hurt tens of thousands of expecting mothers and parents of children enrolled in Medicaid and SCHIP.”

“Minnesota is a state with one of the lowest rates of uninsured people due to our innovative and forward-thinking approaches to health care financing,” Coleman said. “The President’s budget would restrict state flexibility in the use of Medicaid dollars, which could inadvertently result in more folks losing insurance coverage. As we move forward, I will fight to ensure that Minnesota is not penalized for its effective and efficient use of federal funding.”

“There are nearly 50 million uninsured Americans. About 400,000 of them live in New Mexico. The SCHIP program has played an important role in reducing the number of uninsured Americans,” Bingaman said. “In my view, we should be taking actions to fix the uninsured problem, not add to it by preventing states from using SCHIP funding to cover parents and other adults.”

Currently, the states that insure adult coverage do so under a federal “grandfather” law that primarily extends to low-income adults and parents of children enrolled in SCHIP and Medicaid. There are currently over 640,000 adults enrolled in SCHIP.

The letter, co-signed by 23 Senators, requests that the Senate Finance Committee to maintain two provisions:

1. Make permanent a provision that allows eleven states to use up to 20% of SCHIP allotments to cover individuals previously enrolled in Medicaid.

2. Ensure that there is no change in current federal law permitting some states to provide adult coverage under SCHIP.

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