“The President’s fiscal year 2008 budget proposes to reauthorize the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) for five years but provides less than half of the funding needed for states to maintain their existing SCHIP caseloads, let alone to make progress in covering more uninsured low-income children,” according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

In analyzing the September bipartisan agreement reauthorizing the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP) developed by House and Senate negotiators, the Congressional Budget Office found that by 2012, a total of 3.8 million children who otherwise would be uninsured would have health care coverage. Of these 3.8 million children, 84 percent are children who have incomes below the current eligibility limits that states have set.

In “Improving Children’s Health,” the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities makes the following points (among others):

• Most children covered by Medicaid or SCHIP are in working families that are unable to get or afford private health insurance for their children.

• SCHIP covers children who would otherwise be uninsured. Most newly enrolled children were previously uninsured or had recently lost their Medicaid or private health coverage for involuntary reasons, such as parental job loss or divorce.

• Children with special health care needs — those whose developmental, chronic, or behavioral health problems require specialized care — are especially reliant on Medicaid and SCHIP.

• One of the most effective ways to bolster enrollment of eligible low-income children is to expand coverage for their parents. For parents, the typical income limit for publicly funded coverage is about one-third the typical income limit for children, but a number of studies show that when states expand parents’ coverage, children’s participation improves.

• Children covered by Medicaid or SCHIP are much more likely than uninsured children to have preventive health care and to keep up with recommended schedules of well-child visits.

• Because children enrolled in Medicaid or SCHIP are typically in poorer health than other children, it is not surprising that they need to use emergency rooms more often than privately insured children. However, the use of emergency rooms by publicly insured children has declined by about one-quarter over the past decade.

• Children insured by Medicaid or SCHIP are less than one-fifth as likely as uninsured children to have unmet medical needs, which means that their families avoided getting medical care because of the costs.

• A New York study found that although African American and Hispanic children were at greater risk than white children of having unmet needs before they entered SCHIP, these racial and ethnic disparities disappeared after one year of SCHIP coverage.

• In California, parents reported improvements in their children’s school performance after they had been enrolled in SCHIP for a year: the children were more likely to pay attention in class and were better able to keep up with school activities. Similarly, a Kansas study found that children missed fewer school days due to sickness after they were enrolled in SCHIP.

Medicare is available for the elderly. If kids could vote maybe they would have health care.