SCHIP Health Insurance for America’s Children
The State Children’s Health Insurance Program is one funded by the federal government but administered at the state level. The health insurance program was initiated in 1997 and allocates a certain amount of funds to each state during a three year period. States that use of all their funds and end up in a deficit are called Shortfall States, in which case they receive the funds left over from states that did not use all of their funds. Each state has different requirements for eligibility and administers the program in different ways. However, the program accounts for the insurance needs of nearly five million children across the country. As the economy continues to spiral downward, more and more states are finding themselves in the Shortfall category, with less states having unused funds to share. The program was up for reauthorization in 2007 with the additional intent to expand coverage to more than just people below the poverty level. Bush repeatedly vetoed this legislation and finally reauthorized the program with no expansion until March of this year. What will Obama do with the program now that he will be in office at the time of it’s next reauthorization?
January 9th, 2009 at 1:43 pm
Obama (and Congress - he does not do it single-handedly) will increase funding for the program and raise the family income criteria to qualify (something Bush would not do) for benefits.
January 9th, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Well all I can say is that these types of plans need better monitoring or else it really doesn’t make sense to have them in place. There are so many 1099 individuals out there who write everything off just to show a low income but they do reallly have the money to buy regular insurance and we should not be paying for these greedy people to get free insurance for their kids.
January 10th, 2009 at 10:13 am
I’d love to have your thoughts on the current battle going on in Boston between Tufts Medical Center and BCBS of Massachusetts. BCBSMA reimburses Partners Hospitals physicians (a competitor of Tufts with size and clout) as much as 40% more than Tufts physicians, for the same procedures. When BCBS failed to met Tufts in the middle (Tufts asked for reimbursement rates that were equivalent to the average that BCBS pays academic medical centers in the Commonwealth) negotiations fell apart.
Tufts is an inner city hospital that handles the toughest, sickest cases. Over the last five years, it has lost $25 million on its Blue Cross Blue Shield business. It is just struggling to survive. Meanwhile BCBSMA made $209 million in net income in 2007 (the last year we have numbers for) on $6.7 billion in premiums. That same year they paid their President and CEO $3.6 million in total compensation. The prior year (2006) BCBSMA chairman and CEO William Van Faasen was paid more than $16 million as part of his overall retirement package in 2006. So they don’t mind compensating their own executives richly, just not the docs who work at smaller, inner city hospitals like Tufts!
Our system is seriously broken when health insurance companies and their executives get rich while hospitals go broke trying to meet the healthcare needs of the underserved populations within our cities.
For reference, the battle has been covered in The Boston Globe. Tufts has started a website with information for their patients about their choices as this struggle continues. The website can be found at http://www.keepmydoc.org.