New guidelines threaten Ohio’s uninsured kids
In letters to top U.S. health
officials, Gov. Strickland and Sen. Sherrod Brown said the changes should be revoked.
COLUMBUS (AP) — New federal guidelines that require many children to be uninsured for a full year before they have access to government-subsidized coverage threatens Ohio’s expansion of the popular program, Gov. Ted Strickland said Friday.
The guidelines undercut the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, or SCHIP, and should be revoked, Strickland and U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, said in a letter to the top U.S. health official.
The U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services issued the guidelines Aug. 17 as Congress attempts to forge a compromise over competing plans to significantly expand the joint state-federal program.
Strickland said he views the guidelines as an attempt to go around Congress and limit the program’s expansion. He told U.S. Health Secretary Mike Leavitt in the letter that the guidelines “contravene the fundamental objective” of the program.
“What the administration is proposing here will deprive thousands and thousands of needy children from having access to health care services,” Strickland said later in an interview.
The program subsidizes the cost of health insurance for families whose incomes are too high to qualify for Medicaid but too low to afford private insurance.
Both the Senate and the House passed bills this summer that would increase substantially the spending on the program. Bush has promised a veto if they reach his desk in their current form.