Congress missed a deadline to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) over the weekend after the House and the Senate failed to vote on it. CHIP is a program that helps states provide health insurance to children in low-income families.
According to the House Democratic Caucus Chairman, Representative Joe Crowley, CHIP should be a priority for Congress.
“Republican gridlock has put 9 million children at risk. This is unacceptable,” he tweeted.
According to a July report from the Medicaid and CHIP Payment and Access Commission, three states and Washington, D.C., will probably run out of money by December, and the most of the states will run out by March. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 10 states will probably run out of money by the end of the year.
Senate Republicans spent the last few weeks trying to pass an Obamacare repeal bill and failed to meet the deadline for the reauthorization of the program.
CHIP is created in the 1990s and it provides coverage for kids in families with higher, though still lower-middle-class to middle-class, incomes. About 9 million children in the U.S. get coverage through CHIP. The program costs about $14 billion a year.
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