This is great news for seniors whom we support, but why is Congress leaving children behind by extending funding for the successful bipartisan Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) and the Maternal and Infant Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program for only two years? The cost of the “doc fix” is about $140 billion, while a two-year extension of CHIP and home visiting funding is less than $6 billion. Yet in the House proposal this increase required an “offset,” meaning it had to be paid for, while the “doc fix” that is more than 20 times more expensive does not. This is profoundly unjust to children whose lives are equally important.
A clean four-year CHIP funding extension and four years of funding for home visiting must be included in any final “doc fix” package. Certainly the price tag is not the obstacle. Funding for CHIP and home visiting for four years is expected to add up to less than $12 billion to serve millions of vulnerable children, a critical investment in the health of lower-income children.
Today, more than 8 million children depend on CHIP for health coverage. Together with Medicaid, CHIP has played a vital role in bringing the number of uninsured children to the lowest level on record. Simply put, CHIP is a bipartisan success story. But if funding is not extended quickly, up to 2 million children could become uninsured, and millions more would have to pay significantly more for less-comprehensive coverage. This would reverse the progress made over the past two decades and create a health coverage gap among children in working families. The vast majority of governors, both Democrats and Republicans, share our concerns about CHIP funds expiring abruptly. They are concerned about higher costs and inadequate benefits for children, budget challenges to cover children without CHIP, and an increase in uninsured children if CHIP funding ends.
The Children’s Defense Fund strongly supports a clean four-year extension of CHIP through 2019 because:
- The new health insurance exchanges need at least four years to make changes to ensure children have comparable pediatric benefits with costs to families no higher than in CHIP today. It is highly unlikely these improvements will be enacted and implemented by 2017.
- CHIP coverage saves money for states and the federal government. It is more efficient than private health insurance, costs less than subsidized exchange coverage and provides the comprehensive coverage that gives children and families access to the pediatricians, specialists and special facilities children need.
Rigorous research studies have found that quality, evidence-based home visiting programs produce measurable, long-term outcomes for children and families, including better health; greater school readiness, academic achievement, parental involvement, and economic self-sufficiency; and reduced child maltreatment, abuse, and juvenile delinquency.
Almost 80 percent of families participating in the MIECHV program had household incomes at or below 100 percent of the federal poverty line. As in CHIP, where states have flexibility to craft their programs, states that receive MIECHV funding can tailor their programs to serve the specific needs of their communities but have to meet certain benchmarks. Four more years of funding will enable important progress in meeting those benchmarks.
Congress must stop playing politics with children and pass four more years of funding for CHIP and MIECHV as part of the “doc fix” package if millions of children are not to be left with uncertainty and at greater risk. We need to ensure our children are healthy, supported, and strong if they are going to be able to support our growing number of seniors in the future. Congress must commit to this small but extremely important investment. About 30 years ago, CDF, AARP, the National Council on Aging, and the Child Welfare League of America established Generations United, an energetic organization today committed to improving the lives of children, youths, and older adults through intergenerational collaboration, public policies and programs for the enduring benefit of all. Its motto is “Stronger Together.” Four years of funding for both CHIP and MIECHV will help strengthen our children and help them support our older and aging generations.
"Rigorous research studies have found that quality, evidence-based home visiting programs produce measurable, long term outcomes for children and families, including better health, greater school readiness, academic achievement, parental involvement, and economic self-sufficiency, and reduced child maltreatment, abuse, and juvenile delinquency."
ReplyDeleteI've seen this upfront from home visiting based programs like MIECHV and others. The program I work for, Head Start, does home visits every quarter. Through my experience I've seen that parent and community involvement. Parents are given opportunities to serve on program policy making and planning communities to increase the education and needs for their children. Children are more likely to succeed when they have a parent or some one in the community who is working to enhance their education.
Programs like this also provide health programs that include physical, dental, medical and nutritional services to children. Cutting funding programs like CHIP and MIECHV will leave children and their families lacking the essential needed for school readiness and making it through school into adulthood with the help of their parents and community supporters. Which also goes along with the mission of the Children's Defense Fund mission to ensure every child a Healthy Start, a Head Start, a Fair Start, a Safe Start and a Moral Start.
The amount of politics involved in the health and wellbeing of citizens in our country is really disturbing at times. As a public health major, I see numerous scenarios where program implementations are both successful and impactful, yet get cut because they do not have the funding to sustain. I often say that the government complains way too much about having to assist less fortunate people, when they could have prevented the need for government assistance to begin with. Programs like CHIP and MIECHV provide children with the resources necessary to grow and develop, and ultimately become self-sufficient. Resource allocation for the wellbeing of children is essential to the progress of our country. Children are the determinants of whether or not the country floats or sinks in the future. I am not saying that seniors are any less important than children. However, I do believe that thinking ahead is important and children will typically have a lot longer lives to have to live and sustain. There are ways that programs for children and seniors can coexist. The government just needs to plan accordingly. The United States spends nearly 4 trillion dollars annually, yet has some of the worse health outcomes; talk about mismanagement of funds. Some of those costs could be budgeted to keep essential healthcare programs available.
ReplyDeleteI definitely agree. It is very disturbing how much influence political parties and agendas have on the well being of the very citizens that they were created to protect. So many other successful countries have affordable or free healthcare. Like you said healthcare has a domino effect on so many other aspects of life. In SC our governor and other constituents in other states refused federally funded health insurance to their residents. I guess this was an attempt to undermine the Affordable Health Care Act. Through doing so, the state could have lost a lot of money. Just like magic, before the election, the funds were accepted for our state. Before hearing the news of the acceptance of the funds, the only hospital in Marlboro County, Marlboro Park Hospital was announcing that its doors would probably be closed soon. It's sickening.
DeleteI agree with Jackie and Tierra that it is does not make any sense to cut a comprehensive deal that leaves out children. Children are one of the most vulnerable groups and rely on us, as adults in a supposed developed, functioning society to provide for them. Many politicians forget that they were once children and that children now deserve the opportunity to have a healthy start so that may one day grow up to be the next generation of politicians, policymakers, and citizens. Their successful passage into adulthood is not secured without proper healthcare coverage being available. What I don't understand is how two years seems like an adequate time frame for CHIP and MIECHV. Other than the importance of children's health this is just not smart economics for our country: "the cost of the 'doc fix' is about $140 billion, while a two-year extension of CHIP and home visiting funding is less than $6 billion." As Jackie mentioned, the mismanagement of governmental funds is felt in many areas of politics and this affects many lives and has a bearing on other social issues such as poverty and the widening gap between the rich and poor. It's time to look at the overall picture, which begins with fighting for our children first.
ReplyDeleteBy focusing more on families most at risk, programs seek to diminish disparities in health and developmental outcomes. Home visiting is not a single clearly defined methodology of providing service to children and families. Home visiting programs offer a mechanism for ensuring that at risk families have social support, linkage with public and private community services, and ongoing health, developmental, and safety education. The use of preschool home based parenting support to enhance developmental, health, and safety outcomes. Home visiting can be an effective approach to preventing child maltreatment and abuse. When these services are part of a system of high quality well child care linked or integrated with the pediatric medical home, they have the potential to mitigate health and developmental outcome disparities.
ReplyDeleteAs much as it may not make sense to do these cuts, my first question is why do they happen in the first place? I may be redundant with my theme that it all boils down to greed, but the reason I keep repeating it throughout these columns is because we have to realize that those in power do not have the empathy and selflessness that Ella Baker Trainers often possess. They may have entered their respective positions with some intent to help society, but as they moved up the ranks they became entangled in "playing politics with children" or those they judge as voiceless. They do not really worry about the fact that these children will grow up to be adults in society, because they are attempting to carve out the path that they will take in society. These cuts aren't affecting every child in America -- their own children are often reprieved from such injustices. They are specifically affecting children of color, those who need our help the most. So I am not only going to point the finger at congress, the government or society, because we are the government in a sense. I know that I'll have to do extensive research to see which political candidate in 2016 has values and priorities which closely align with mine and CDF's. I will pay close attention to them practicing what they preach. Hillary Clinton recently advocated for "treating every child as if they were our own child", and I strongly agree with that sentiment because America suffers from a deficit in empathy. If we changed the narrative from "them" to "us", perhaps these cuts would never be seen as acceptable in the first place. But as of now, we can collectively advocate for the mental, physical, psychological and spiritual health of all of our scholars, regardless of their socioeconomic class. Freedom Schools programming is a great start because just telling our scholars that they possess something inside so strong can help them believe it on a daily and consistent basis. But as we do so, we should also be making that message clear to those who don't value the strength inherent in children, or those who fear their strength.
ReplyDeleteThe idea of cutting funding for Chip and MIECHV) is illogical. There has been an enormous push to having healthcare available nationally, so the idea of cutting this funding is ludicrous. Plus, the benefits of these programs outweigh the negatives, if any. The children that are at the highest risk from birth would be shortchanged even more so from terminating these programs. The article clearly states that:
ReplyDelete“Rigorous research studies have found that quality, evidence-based home visiting programs produce measurable, long-term outcomes for children and families, including better health; greater school readiness, academic achievement, parental involvement, and economic self-sufficiency; and reduced child maltreatment, abuse, and juvenile delinquency.”
This evidence, plus the lower price tag associated with both CHIP and MIECHV should be plenty of reason to keep the programs. Think of the consequences for short changing the children and families that need this support the most. The unborn children and new generations that would be negatively impacted could become an issue within our country. If they aren’t receiving adequate help and support their lives may very well be in danger from lack of medical care. If there aren’t resources made available in the early years, their academic success may very well be in jeopardy. There are an innumerable amount or reasons and research supporting both CHIP and MIECHV.
Its ridiculous how congress tend to cut children short even with the push of Medicaid services and the demand to make sure that everyone is insured. The children should come first instead of getting shorthanded as if they are not important. This article is a real eye opener.
ReplyDeleteIt's sad how much our society says the children are the future, but will do everything to devalue them. We strip away everything that would help them more capable to achieve and compete with children around the world. We take away money for food and quality educational programming and they are still expected to thrive.
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