25 Years of Children’s Health Insurance Program CHIP Impact / Public News Service

This week marks the 25th anniversary of the children’s health insurance program, known as CHIP, which in California is part of Medi-Cal.

The program is a resounding success. In 2020, only 3.6% of children in the Golden State were uninsured. Medi-Cal and CHIP serve nearly 5.5 million children in the state.

Even though most children are healthy, said Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University, it’s too great a risk to go without health insurance.

“So any gap in coverage for children is a problem for families and a problem for our country as a whole,” she said. “It pays huge dividends to ensure children have access to health insurance so they can grow up healthy and thrive.”

The state legislature has steadily improved Medi-Cal by making undocumented children eligible in 2016 and eliminating all premiums beginning July 1.

Alexandra Parma, senior policy research associate at the First 5 Center for Children’s Policy, said California is working to get federal approval to allow children to stay on Medi-Cal from birth to age. 5 years old.

“The change would allow children to be continuously enrolled in Medi-Cal until their fifth birthday,” she said, “so they don’t have to do those annual refills like under the previous policy.”

Sarah Crow, chief executive of First 5, said the program’s biggest flaw is that too few doctors accept Medi-Cal, resulting in long wait times to see existing providers.

“We have too few providers that accept Medi-Cal because of the very low payment rates offered to the MediCal program,” she said, “so that’s where the program suffers.”

Crow advised parents to make sure the county Medi-Cal office has a current address on file, so no one loses coverage. The state has delayed sending out annual renewal notices during COVID, but that will change once the pandemic state of emergency is lifted.

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It’s been about a year since families in Virginia received funds from the U.S. Child Tax Credit, and they want it reinstated.

According to a Columbia University study, the Child Tax Credit lifted more than 3.7 million children out of poverty in December 2021. The study also found that in January of this year, the child poverty rate could rise from 12.1% to about 17.1%.

Virginia kindergarten teacher and Fairfax County Teachers’ Federation member Melissa Keebaugh said she’s felt the effects firsthand and seen them at her school. She said restoring the child tax credit would have many benefits for children and families.

“I think we would see our kids a lot more without having food instability,” Keebaugh said. “It would give them access to better housing, more secure housing. I’m sure the schools would benefit then, because they could put more money into it.”

Keebaugh’s personal benefit from the child tax credit was to be able to pay for after-school care costs for his daughter.

Initially, when the Child Tax Credit first came into existence, she said she wasn’t sure, but said she saw its importance for families trying to make ends meet.

According to the Coalition on Human Needs, there was a 31% increase from 2021 to 2022 in the number of households with children reporting that they always did not have enough to eat.

In her work as a kindergarten teacher, Keebaugh said she sees families struggling with food insecurity.

Herndon Elementary School, where she works, has a program that provides families with bags of easy-to-prepare food over the weekend. Since the end of the child tax credit, she noted that the needs of the program have increased.

“Since the Child Tax Credit all but disappeared, our claim numbers have doubled,” Keebaugh said. “And, in fact, right now we have a waiting list for our students who need these food resources.”

With rising inflation and high prices, Keebaugh said things only got more complicated. She said she finds being able to do things with her family isn’t as affordable as it used to be.

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When families started receiving expanded Child Tax Credit payments during the pandemic, the extra family income lifted nearly four million children out of poverty, but when the payments stopped, child poverty increased by more than 40%.

In Utah, just one year after monthly payments were stopped, the number of families with children reporting food insecurity increased by 74%.

Gina Cornia, executive director of Utahns Against Hunger, thinks lawmakers should restore payments to $300 to $360 per child, especially with inflation nearing double digits.

“With the price of food, and with the price of gas and all these other financial pressures that these families are feeling, reinstating the monthly child tax credit would really help alleviate these economic concerns for families,” said supported Cornia.

Congress debated restoring the payments earlier in the current session, but negotiations stalled after conservative lawmakers claimed they were contributing to inflation and demanded work requirements be added to the program. Political observers say the expanded child tax credit is unlikely to be reinstated this year.

Research shows that children living in poverty are more likely to contract diseases and be in poor health. They perform at lower grade levels and experience stress and anxiety more often. Cornia stressed that it is impossible to overestimate the difference that some financial leeway makes in the lives of these families.

“I think in the lifetime of raising a child, it’s a huge difference,” Cornia said. “Especially since the Child Tax Credit has already been shown to lift families out of poverty. Who doesn’t want that?”

Economists say the average family will pay at least $2,300 more this year for food, shelter and other essentials. With the child tax credit, a family with a child under six would have received $3,600 to offset these expenses.

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In terms of educational performance, New Mexico consistently ranks at or near the bottom among the 50 states, but that could change if a dedicated influx of money is approved by voters next month.

The state’s economy is heavily dependent on oil and gas, which also means a roller coaster of boom and bust cycles. But the boom led the state to pile up $26 billion in its Land Grant Permanent Fund, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world.

On Nov. 8, voters will decide whether an additional 1.25% of the fund’s growth should be spent to support early childhood care and education, as well as at-risk students.

Jacob Vigil, senior research and policy analyst for New Mexico Voices for Children, explained why voting for the proposal should be easy.

“Not only would it have no impact on the General Fund, but it wouldn’t be a tax on new Mexicans,” Vigil pointed out. “It would also have no real impact on the solvency of the fund. We have already withdrawn 5% per year for other beneficiaries, mainly public education.”

Polls indicate a majority of voters back the measure, though critics have argued the fund already provides three-quarters of a billion dollars for education, and tapping into it further jeopardizes the government’s future interest income. ‘State.

The ballot issue follows the creation of the New Mexico Department of Early Childhood Education and Care, which would receive about 60% of the new funding.

The measure would earmark money to be spent on universal early education and child care and bolster home visiting programs for new parents. About an additional $100 million would be directed to the state’s K-12 programs.

Vigil thinks that makes sense for New Mexico, where more than one in four children under the age of five live in poverty, one of the highest rates in the country.

“This fund is drawn from the wealth of our state,” Vigil noted. “It should be something that benefits future generations, especially since we rank so low, so consistently, on measures of child well-being and education.”

If the amendment passes, 40% of the additional distribution would address some of the concerns raised by a lawsuit known as Yazzie and Martinez v. New Mexico. In 2018, a state district court judge ruled that New Mexico did not prepare students equally for college and a career, specifically citing the lack of sufficient education for Native Americans.

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