Republicans are increasingly confident that a five-year reauthorization for the Children’s Health Insurance Program will be included in a must-pass spending bill next week.
Rep. Fred Upton, R-Mich., told the Washington Examiner that he has been talking with House GOP leadership about including a five-year reauthorization. The measure has received support from various Republican groups, including the centrist Tuesday Group.
Upton said that he has not received approval from leadership on CHIP but he feels “pretty good that it will be part of the package next week.”
Congress is expected to take up another short-term continuing resolution to replace the existing spending bill that is funding the government until Jan. 19.
Upton has been meeting with various Republican groups in recent days about the reauthorization. He said he met with the Tuesday Group Wednesday and he also brought up the issue at a retreat of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which passed its own version of CHIP last year.
Meanwhile, the second-ranking Republican senator said it is probable that CHIP will be reauthorized next week.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told reporters Wednesday that it is “highly likely” a five-year reauthorization will happen on or about Jan. 19, when the spending bill expires, according to the Dallas Morning News.
Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, said he is pushing for Senate leadership to include a five-year funding bill. Hatch spearheaded the original CHIP legislation in 1997.
“So far we haven’t gotten an answer,” he said.
Hatch said that there is a lot of support for including CHIP in the Jan. 19 continuing resolution.
CHIP provides block grants to states for insurance for nearly nine million low-income children. The program expired Sept. 30, but states had some money leftover from their block grants.
The House passed a five-year reauthorization of CHIP in November. However, it has gone nowhere in the Senate because of Democratic objections to how Republicans want to pay for it.
The House GOP sought to pay for CHIP by charging wealthy seniors higher Medicare premiums and raiding an Obamacare disease prevention fund. It also shortened a grace period between when someone doesn’t pay his premium and loses his Obamacare coverage.
The House passed its CHIP bill with only minimal Democratic support for the traditionally bipartisan bill.
But now that the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says CHIP’s cost is not as much as thought, Upton is confident that lawmakers can sidestep the funding issue.
CBO said recently that repealing Obamacare’s individual mandate in the tax legislation helps to lower the cost of CHIP. The agency projected that without the mandate for everyone to have health insurance, fewer parents will sign up their children for the program. As a result, CBO found that it would cost $800 million to fund CHIP over the next decade, $7.3 billion less than the agency’s estimates before tax reform was passed.
“CBO rejiggered the whole thing,” Upton said. “Now it can be fairly easily covered I think.”
He also believes that funding for community health centers, which also expired Sept. 30, will be part of the greater reauthorization package.
The Dec. 22 continuing resolution included nearly $3 billion in short-term funding to keep CHIP going through March. New research shows that short-term patch may not be enough for some states.
A new report said that 21 states would run out of money on Feb. 28, imperiling coverage for nearly 1.7 million children.
In addition, 11 states would run out of funding before that, meaning those states would need funding for a longer period to continue to cover all children, according to a report from the Georgetown University Health Policy Institute.
