Children's Health Insurance Program

Floor Speech

CHILDREN'S HEALTH INSURANCE PROGRAM -- (Senate - September 28, 2007)

Ms. MURKOWSKI. Madam President, the rising number of Americans without health insurance is a problem that is recognized by all Members of this body. There are some 46.6 million Americans today who are not receiving proper medical care.

Compounding the problem is the reality that, as my colleague from Oregon--Senator Wyden--likes to say, we do not have a health care system in this country; we have a sick care system.

As we look at the growing cost to our economy that health care represents, the number one thing we can do today to reduce that cost is preventative medicine--making sure that Americans can access health care today, so that they are not sick tomorrow.

The Children's Health Insurance Program is an important means to provide the most vulnerable of our population--our children--with health care. And we all know that when our children are sick, it is not just the child that is impacted but the parents as well; missing time at work to care for their child or catching the latest bug their child brings home from the daycare center. The social and economic impact of a sick child goes well beyond the need for cough syrup or a band-aid. And the impact is even greater in our Native communities.

Section 401 of the CHIP reauthorization bill provides $10 million in grants for child health studies, including: preventative health care, treatment for chronic and acute conditions, and discovery of knowledge gaps within CHIP and child health. Studies such as these will help to narrow the gap in treatment disparities among native and non-White children, as well as to provide preventive health care services so our children stay healthy while reducing the expensive costs of sick care in America.

This is just one reason why it is important that programs such as CHIP continue their viability. If the President vetoes the bill as he said he would, the resulting straight reauthorization of CHIP at the current baseline assumption means that 800,000 children currently enrolled in CHIP would lose their coverage. But under the CHIP reauthorization bill, those children, plus 4 million more children would be able to access health care--preventive care.

We should not have to read about tragedies such as 12-year old Deamonte Driver from Maryland who died from a tooth abscess. Deamonte's life could have been saved by a routine $80 tooth extraction but his family was booted from Medicaid and his mother couldn't afford to pay for Deamonte to receive the necessary dental care. Deamonte Driver died in February of this year.

This heartbreaking story is just one example of why the reauthorization of CHIP--at the Finance Committee passed levels--is so important. 800,000 more children should not be put in a similar position as Deamonte.

In addition, outreach programs will allow more children to be enrolled in the CHIP and Medicaid programs. This bill provides $100 million in grants for outreach and reenrollment efforts--$10 million will provide grants to Indian organizations to improve enrollment of Native Americans. Another $10 million will be spent on a national outreach program and the remaining $80 million will target rural areas with high rates of eligible but not enrolled children, racial and ethnic minorities and populations with cultural barriers to enrollment.

But CHIP is only one part of the health care struggle. As I noted before, some 46.6 million Americans are without health care insurance. In my State of Alaska, about one out of six people do not have health insurance. And the sad reality is that most of those without health insurance are employed. Only 1 in 10 of the uninsured in Alaska are unemployed people in the workforce.

For every family that is covered through an employer-based health care policy or is able to purchase their own health care insurance, fewer adults and children will rely on Medicaid and CHIP for their health care needs, and create less of a strain on Federal resources.

We know that preventive care is much more effective, both medically and economically, than caring for an illness. Likewise, providing our businesses with the ability to offer affordable health care insurance to their employees is a preventative means to lower the Federal Government's costs as mandatory spending for health care programs takes up a greater and greater portion of the Federal budget.

Until we reach the point where we in Congress can agree on how to address the future of our Nation's health care policies, however, programs like CHIP are needed to ensure that those who are most vulnerable are not left out.

I support this reauthorization bill as a temporary fix of a long standing problem, but we as a Congress must be willing to take a serious look at the future of our health care system, and ask ourselves if we are serious about fixing it. It is a decision that will impact millions of Americans. I urge the President to support the CHIP bill to allow more American children access to the healthcare they need to stay healthy, to stay alert and to function well in school. The best investment we can make is in our children and by signing the CHIP bill, the President can grant our future generation of over 10 million children access to vital health care services.

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