SCHIP backers rally for program expansion

BANGOR – With a critical deadline nearing for the renewal of a popular federal children’s health coverage program, proponents gathered in Bangor on Thursday to announce their support for an expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program.

Federal lawmakers are completing a bipartisan proposal that would not only renew funding but significantly increase it, encouraging states to expand income eligibility guidelines and bring more youngsters into the program.

President Bush has vowed to veto the measure, saying it will encourage middle-income families who can afford private insurance to enroll their children in the federally funded program instead. Bush wants to prohibit states from expanding SCHIP guidelines unless they meet stringent quotas in covering lower-income children first. Without the president’s signature, SCHIP authorization will expire Sept. 30, leaving millions of children across the nation – and about 15,000 children in Maine – without health care coverage.

The renewal legislation has the support of all four members of Maine’s congressional delegation, but a spokesman from a conservative policy group in Maine said Thursday that Bush is right to hold the line against expansion.

Thursday’s media event took place at Penobscot Community Health Center on Union Street. The majority of children seen by PCHC are covered either by SCHIP or by MaineCare, Maine’s Medicaid program, according to the health center’s medical director, Robert Allen. They receive a full range of preventive services, such as well-child visits, immunizations and dental care, he said, as well as needed treatment for injuries and illnesses.

“Giving kids access to health care is a tremendous investment,” Allen said. Without the kind of “medical home” provided by the clinic, children typically aren’t seen by a doctor until they’re acutely ill, when their parents bring them to the nearest hospital emergency room, he said.

Emergency care is expensive, Allen noted, and not able to provide the kind of consistent medical support children need to get and stay well.

Also speaking at Thursday’s press conference was Ed Gorham, director of the Maine AFL-CIO, which representing 40,000 working adults in Maine. Gorham praised the Maine congressional delegation and urged its members to stay the course, “suffer[ing] whatever outrages may be visited upon us [by the Bush veto] and then overriding them.”

Sara Gagne-Holmes, executive director of the consumer advocacy group Maine Equal Justice, praised the “clear track record of success” of Medicaid and SCHIP in reducing the number of uninsured children by 30 percent nationwide and by nearly 50 percent in Maine since 1998. She said SCHIP must be renewed in order to maintain current enrollment and to extend coverage to about 12,000 additional Maine youngsters still not enrolled but eligible under the state’s current guidelines.

Representatives from the offices of Sen. Olympia Snowe, Sen. Susan Collins, Rep. Michael Michaud and Rep. Tom Allen read statements of support for the proposed renewal legislation.

Rev. Bob Carleson, president of PCHC, presented a statement from Gov. John Baldacci.

“Health care is a basic human right,” the governor said in his statement, adding that SCHIP has moved Maine closer to his goal of providing affordable health coverage to everyone in the state. While Maine is unlikely to liberalize its SCHIP eligibility guidelines, Baldacci said it was unacceptable for Bush to curtail the right of states right to do so.

While there is broad bipartisan support for the measure being fine-tuned in a congressional conference committee this week, some conservatives agree with the president that expanding SCHIP is irresponsible. In Maine, Tarren Bragdon of the Maine Heritage Policy Center said Thursday that Bush is acting responsibly in ensuring that federal health care dollars are available to the neediest families first. Bragdon also pointed out that competition for federal funding will increase as the “baby boom” generation ages and becomes more dependent on programs such as Social Security and Medicare.

“You don’t want to make promises to kids that you can’t keep,” he said.

SCHIP was enacted in 1998, designed to help states provide medical coverage to children living in families who make too much money to qualify for Medicaid but not enough to pay for private health insurance. States must provide “seed” money for their SCHIP programs, which is then matched with federal dollars at a rate of about 4 to 1, higher than the standard Medicaid match.

The original legislation set eligibility at two times the federal poverty level, but also allowed states to apply for expanded eligibility guidelines. Maine is among the states that still cuts off access to SCHIP at 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $42,000 for a family of four.