Obama lifts a directive imposed by bush that restricted states’ abilities to expand CHIP to children in higher-income families
06 02 09 - 19:45
Obama ends children's care limits
By Kevin Freking - Associated Press
WASHINGTON - President Obama made more children from middle-class families eligible for government health insurance yesterday by lifting a directive imposed by his predecessor.
In 2007, the Bush administration said it would strictly adhere to guidelines that limited the scope of the State Children's Health Insurance Program. A year later, it backed off its threat to penalize states that enrolled middle-class children without first proving they had enrolled nearly all poorer children first.
In a memo issued yesterday, Obama completely lifted the restrictions, which many governors and Democratic lawmakers said had been nearly impossible to meet.
Obama said in a letter to the Department of Health and Human Services that "tens of thousand of children have been denied health care coverage" because of the directive.
Under the restrictions, at least 95 percent of poor children eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP had to already be in those programs before states could begin using federal funds to cover higher-income children.
Also, states covering higher-income children had to make sure individuals had been without health insurance for one year before they were allowed to get government-sponsored coverage.
Obama's memo was issued a day after he signed legislation that will enable about seven million children to continue coverage through SCHIP and allow four million more to sign up.