Rockefeller Salvages the CHIP Program

[babylonsister]

Props to Senator Rockefeller yet again! :applause:

http://washingtonindependent.com/62048/rockefeller-salvages-the-chip-program

Rockefeller Salvages the CHIP Program
By Mike Lillis 10/2/09 12:39 PM


A little after midnight, nearing the end of yesterday’s marathon health reform debate in the Senate Finance Committee, Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) had the stage, and the audience fell strangely silent. Rockefeller talked about his experiences as a VISTA volunteer in Appalachia decades ago; he talked about the destitution and absence of health care in the region; and finally, with tears in his eyes, he talked about the need to preserve Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, for the sake of people like those.

Under the finance panel’s bill, Medicaid would be expanded, but the CHIP program would phase out as those kids transitioned into insurance plans on the newly proposed state insurance exchanges. Rockefeller argued the need to keep those youngsters in CHIP, rather than pushing them to the exchange, “where they’re at the mercy of people who will have them for lunch.” He was talking about private insurance companies.

The West Virginia Democrat, who chairs the Finance Committee’s health subpanel, sponsored an amendment to keep the CHIP as it is. “I don’t think there’s any reason to dismantle a program that works,” he said.

Republicans were unmoved. Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa), the panel’s senior Republican, said that keeping kids in a public program rather than moving them to private coverage “is contrary to everything we’ve been working for.”

Yet a report released yesterday seems to bolster Rockefeller’s argument. According to researchers at Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a financial consulting firm, shifting kids from CHIP to the exchange would put increased cost burdens on those families. Specifically, the study found that children currently enrolled in median CHIP plans living at 175 percent of poverty pay nothing for their care, while those living at 225 percent of poverty pay about 2 percent of treatment costs. By contrast, those same kids getting coverage through private insurers on the exchange would pay between 5 percent and 35 percent of health costs, respectively, “greatly increasing their financial burden and leaving low-income children worse off as a result of health reform,” the researchers noted.

Children’s health care advocates quickly jumped on the findings as reason to preserve CHIP. Bruce Lesley, president of First Focus, a children’s advocacy group that commissioned the study, said the findings confirm that CHIP provides kids “the best, most affordable care.”

“Congress should be fixing what is broken and building on what works,” Lesley said in a statement. “CHIP works for kids and we should be expanding this program, not phasing it out.”

The vote approving Rockefeller’s amendment was 13 to 9, with Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) the only member crossing party lines. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) remained neutral, voting “present.”

[DJ13]

1. If we get a real public option with subsidies CHIP would be redundant

[John Q. Citizen]

3. If lots of Dems didn't vote like Repos we'd have single payer - affordable, available, and effective

instead of a market based diversion, "The public option" which just keeps the private insurance company criminals around longer.

[Rosa Luxemburg]

2. Grassley wants to privatize kids

I think it's good to keep CHIP and it can be a good transition when the single payer healthcare system comes (cough!).

[Hidden Stillness]

4. Very Impressed With Rockefeller Lately

I have been increasingly impressed with Sen. Rockefeller during this whole disastrous Senate Finance Committee "health" bill markup, also on a recent appearance on Charlie Rose. On one day when Rockefeller was fighting for a public-option Amendment, later crushed, the language used against the practices of corporations was fabulous and very strong--"rapacious," and "how good they are" at cheating people out of claims that should have been paid, and referring to the testimony of the former insurance executive whose job it was to make up propaganda against any reform of any kind, etc. Rockefeller also made a comment at an attempted Amendment by Sen. Bill Nelson to rework financing so that the Government could re-coup money from another part of the program, and use that to make up the difference concerning the huge losses on "Medicare" Part D prescriptions, because they would not negotiate prices down, as a group. This would then pay for the difference, and allow older people to get prescriptions they cannot now afford, as it would have closed "the doughnut hole." Rockefeller talked of feeling actual "rapture" listening to Nelson speak, because this, the attempt to help people who desperately need it, is what they are all really there for, not all this deal-making for insurance interests. Rockefeller was absolutely smiling, beaming, at the Nelson proposal to help people crushed by Part D; it was a very impressive sign of a real conscience, and a real public servant.

Rockefeller has the same kind of attitude, it seems to me, as the Roosevelts and Kennedys: they are rich people who know what rich people and capitalists are really like, know them up close, and are disgusted. Rockefeller, on this Committee, seems increasingly depressed at what is happening. As disgusted as I have been with the whole makeup of this Committee, I have become very impressed with the compassion of Rockefeller, even as everything dies.