Iowa Governor Culver Calls On Bush Administration To Allow States To Expand Children's Health Insurance Program

Governor Joins 29 Other Governors in Letter to Secretary Leavitt to Reverse New Mandate Limiting SCHIP Expansion

September 17, 2007 -- (Des Moines) Today, Iowa Governor Chet Culver has joined 29 other Governors from around the nation calling on the Bush Administration to reverse a new mandate that limits states’ abilities to expand the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP).

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On August 17, 2007, a new mandate imposed by Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), a branch of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, limited state flexibility to expand SCHIP to include children of families with income levels at or above 250 percent of the Federal Poverty Level.

In a letter to HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt, Governor Culver and other governors wrote, “Released as a measure to address the substitution of SCHIP for private insurance, the requirements amount to a unilateral restriction on state authority to provide health insurance coverage for children and undermine the foundation of the state-federal partnership upon which SCHIP was built. … Flexibility to set coverage levels is a basic tenet of this vital and successful program and one repeatedly endorsed by this Administration when it granted permission to multiple states to expand their coverage options. The CMS clarification reverses this policy by mandating administrative requirements that could result in hundreds of thousands of children and tens of thousands of adults losing health insurance.”

The new CMS rules have a direct impact on Iowa. Governor Culver has a goal of working with the federal government to cover every child in the state. The new CMS rules limiting states’ abilities to expand the program may limit Iowa’s ability to cover every child.

In the letter, the Governors called on Secretary Leavitt and CMS to “reiterate its commitment to the state-federal partnership under SCHIP by immediately rescinding its August 17, 2007, letter and joining governors in our efforts to reauthorize SCHIP this year.”

Source: Iowa Governor