Public Employee Press

Bush team blocks health funds for uninsured children

In a stark betrayal of the president’s famous promise to “leave no child behind,” the Bush administration is fighting bipartisan legislation that would restore $1.1 billion in previously allocated State Children’s Health Insurance Program funds to the states.

The SCHIP money is used to provide health care coverage for uninsured children. Ordinarily, funds that are not spent on time are redistributed among states that have met the deadline and need additional money. But in 2004, the U.S. Treasury locked up the unspent funds at midnight Sept. 30, when the federal government closed the books on its 2004 budget.

About $700 million of the $1.1 billion is money that was targeted for New York State, which New York State has come to depend on that extra funding.

In New York City, Local 1549 clerical-administrative employees in the Health and Hospitals Corp. and Human Resources Administration work hard to enroll uninsured children — but the money must be there for them to do their job.

If the money is not rescued, six states, including New York, are likely to have insufficient funding in 2005 to cover all the children enrolled in their SCHIP programs.

The $1.1 billion could have provided health coverage for approximately 750,000 uninsured children.
“With all the tremendous health care needs that children have, returning any money is a crime,” said Judy Wessler, director of the locally based Commission on the Publics’ Health System.

Bi-partisan legislation to give states additional time to use the funds and ensure that all SCHIP funding remains in the program over the next three years is considered a long shot, according to Anne Marie Costello of the Children’s Defense Fund.

The Bush Administration is opposing the legislation, and Republican congressional leaders have failed to schedule it for a vote.