Congress Not Delivering Yet on Public Priorities for Healthcare
Despite a recent declaration that Congress will focus on tax reform, the need to address critical healthcare issues remains. A recent Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) survey found that a large majority of the public sees reauthorizing funding for the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and passing legislation to stabilize the Affordable Care Act (ACA) marketplace as important priorities that need to be addressed now.
According to the September Kaiser Health Tracking Poll: “Specifically, three-fourths of the public (75 percent) say it is “extremely” or “very” important for Congress to work on reauthorizing funding for CHIP, the program which provides health care coverage for uninsured children. This is followed by seven in ten (69 percent) who say the same about passing legislation to stabilize the ACA marketplaces in order to minimize premium increases and encourage more insurers to offer health plans.
Fewer, but still about half, say it is “extremely” or “very” important for Congress to work on reforming the tax code, which may cut taxes for some individuals (49 percent), or work on continuing efforts to repeal and replace the 2010 healthcare law (47 percent).
Is Congress up to the challenge?
A bipartisan legislative effort spearheaded by the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions to make changes to the ACA to help stabilize insurance markets for 2018 seems to have slowed, and may even be stalled. This, despite what seemed to be openings to support a bipartisan effort from the White House and Republican leadership in the Senate.
As for CHIP, Congress failed to reauthorize the program before it expired on September 30, caught in the frenzy of the Senate trying one last time to repeal and replace the ACA.
Failure to reauthorize CHIP is a potential calamity. The program provides healthcare coverage to 8.9 million children in low-income families in the fiscal year 2016. According to KFF, all but two states are counting on CHIP funding in their 2018 state budgets. KFF notes: “…of the 42 states (including DC) that provided an estimate of when they will run out of their FY 2017 CHIP allotment, 10 anticipate exhausting funding by the end of 2017. A total of 32 states project they will exhaust federal funds as of the end of March 2018.”
The Washington Post reports that CHIP reauthorization should be taken up today by the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee and the Senate Finance Committee. The Energy and Commerce Committee wants to tie CHIP’s approval to hurricane disaster relief to Puerto Rico. This aid for Puerto Rico would be subsidized by such things as raising Medicare rates for wealthier seniors, redirecting dollars from the ACA’s prevention fund and shortening to 30 days a grace period for ACA enrollees who don’t pay their premiums.
While the KFF survey shows that the Affordable Care Act is still on many Americans’ minds, uninsured children are the greater priority. Congress needs to get this done.
To view the September Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, click here.
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