Legislative update
From National Family Voices:
CHIP AND F2F LEGISLATION
CHIP AND F2F LEGISLATION
On Wednesday, both the Senate Finance Committee and the House Energy & Commerce Committee will take up ("mark up") legislation to extend funding for the CHIP program for five years - what advocates had hoped for. (See details below.) The House committee will also mark up several other bills to extend various programs, including...
Family-to-Family Health Information Centers! In addition to the CHIP bill, the House committee will also mark up the "Community Health And Medical Professionals Improve Our Nation," or CHAMPION Act. This bill provides for an extension of funding for Family-to-Family Health Information Centers (F2Fs) for two more years (FYs 2018 and 2019) at $6 million per year (an increase of $1 million per year), AND calls for F2Fs to be developed in all territories and for at least one Indian tribe. (See Section 104, pp. 21-22.) The territories are Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands, and the Northern Mariana Islands.
The CHAMPION Act also extends funding for Community Health Centers, the Special Diabetes Programs, the National Health Service Corps, Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education, the Youth Empowerment Program, and the Personal Responsibility Education Program.
Unfortunately, the House bill pays for the cost of the CHAMPION Act by cutting the Prevention and Public Health Fund, which currently pays for important programs of the CDC, including childhood immunizations and lead poisoning prevention, among other activities. If the Prevention Fund is no longer available for those programs, then there will be less money for other important appropriated programs in the health and education budgets. Hopefully, this offset (a.k.a. "pay-for") will be amended as the bill moves through the legislative process. The Senate bill does not include an offset.
CHIP bills. The House bill - the "Helping Ensure Access for Little Ones, Toddlers, and Hopeful Youth by Keeping Insurance Delivery Stable" (HEALTHY KIDS) Act - closely mirrors the Senate bill - the "Keep Kids' Insurance Dependable and Secure" (KIDS) Act. In addition to extending CHIP funding for five more years - through FY 2022 - both the House and Senate CHIP bills:
- Extend the current 23-percentage-point "bump" in the CHIP matching rate through FY 2019, phasing down to 11.5 percentage points in FY 2020 and then reverting to the regular CHIP matching rate in FYs 2021 and 2022.
- Extend the CHIP maintenance-of-effort (MOE) requirements for children in families with annual income less than 300% of the federal poverty level for three additional years (FYs 2020-2022). Under current law, the MOE applies through FY 2019 to children in families with income less than 400% of the poverty level, but most CHIP enrollees are in the below-300% group anyway. See Positive Development for CHIP Emerges from Senate Finance Committee Leaders.
- Extend Express Lane Eligibility, the Qualifying State Option and the Child Contingency Fund for five years, and include five years of funding for the following programs at levels specified under current law: the Childhood Obesity Demonstration Project; the Pediatric Quality Measures Program; and Outreach and Enrollment Grants.
The House CHIP bill is paid for by changing Medicaid third-party-liability rules, which could jeopardize reimbursement for prenatal care and pediatric preventive services.
A summary of the HEALTHY KIDS Act (CHIP), CHAMPION Act (F2Fs), and other bills to be marked up in the Energy & Commerce Committee can be found at http://docs.house.gov/
The Senate Finance Committee will be marking up only the CHIP legislation, the KIDS Act. Amendments will be offered, but some or all of them may be withdrawn. (Committee members offer and withdraw amendments to show their support for a program or provision when they know that the amendment will not be adopted, cannot be paid for, or leadership does not want amendments.)
Next steps: Assuming the House Energy and Commerce Committee and Senate Finance Committee approve the legislation, the bills must be passed by the full House and Senate, respectively. Any differences must be resolved and then each chamber must vote on the compromise legislation. Once the president signs it, it will become law. Despite the time-sensitivity of the CHIP legislation, this process could take a while. It may be particularly difficult to reach an agreement on how to pay for the cost of the bills.
To watch the markups:
The Senate Finance Committee markup begins at 9:30 am ET and can be viewed at https://www.finance.senate.
The House Energy & Commerce Committee is scheduled to hold its markup Wednesday, October 4, at 1:00 pm ET. It is not clear whether this will be broadcast, although it probably will be, at either https://energycommerce.house.
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