Gov. John Hickenlooper is doing the right thing in trying to protect 75,000 Colorado children and 800 pregnant women from losing their health insurance coverage on Jan. 31. His emergency ask of the state’s budget writers to spend $9.6 million to protect this vulnerable population shows real leadership that we hope lawmakers in Washington heed.
While a perpetual back-filling of what should be the federal government’s obligation likely isn’t sustainable, the emergency is real. For some, the drop in health insurance coverage could come mid-hospital stay or with a fast-approaching due date and no alternative to help cover the costs of care.
We’ve been dismayed and infuriated, as have parents across the nation, that Congress hasn’t been able to continue funding the Children’s Health Insurance Program despite broad bipartisan agreement that it should be done, and months ago.
Republicans proved this week they are capable of passing significant legislation, which leaves the question lingering why they haven’t also tackled CHIP funding. Itap unacceptable for Republicans to be making any demands about identifying sources for the roughly $14 billion a year spent on CHIP. They lost that moral high ground when they passed a $1.5 trillion tax cut without eliminating tax deductions and exemptions that easily could have helped pay for it. Surely if their rich donors deserve help, so do working families.
But itap also unacceptable for Democrats to continue fighting old battles while families start going without. Democrats need to accept the reality that they are in the minority and take the reasonable GOP offer of funding CHIP at pre-Obamacare levels. The Affordable Care Act increased the federal share of funding for CHIP by 23 percentage points beginning in 2015, which means a few states now have their entire CHIP programs paid for by the federal government and most are at 88 percent.
Sens. Cory Gardner, R-Colo., and Michael Bennet, D-Colo., are co-sponsors of a reasonable compromise bill that, while it is certainly not ideal to either lawmaker, accomplishes the goal of ensuring funding continues, albeit at a reduced rate.
House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi must be careful here, lest she look like a Tea Party radical ready to win politically at any cost to the public. Brinkmanship is not what Americans want.
Meanwhile, riding high on a partisan victory that is the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, House Speaker Paul Ryan should seek a bipartisan win to show just how reasonable he can be. Ryan needs to convince his members that the Senate version Bennet and Gardner support (a far less extreme measure) is the right direction for America.
Perhaps he can appeal to his more conservative members by emphasizing the federal funding protects pregnant women who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid — they are gainfully employed — but too little to afford private health insurance.
For a woman learning of an unintended pregnancy and facing the daunting reality of thousands of dollars in medical bills for prenatal care and delivery, unpaid family leave when the child is born, and uncertainty about health insurance coverage for their newborn, learning that CHIP is available to take care of two of those concerns is a small blessing.
Colorado can’t float the expense of providing that blessing forever, but providing a stop-gap to the incompetence that is pervasive at the federal level is the right thing to do.
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