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Date: Monday, April 27, 1998 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: HCFA Press Office (202) 690-6145
HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala today announced approval of New Jersey's plan for children's health insurance, which will provide health coverage for thousands of uninsured children.
New Jersey could receive approximately $89 million in new funds for Fiscal Year 1998 alone, which state officials will use to insure as many as 102,000 new children by the end of the first year of their program. The program is the result of the federal Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) -- the historic, bipartisan legislation signed last year by President Clinton. The law allocates $24 billion over the next five years to help states expand health insurance to children whose families earn too much for traditional Medicaid, yet not enough to afford private health insurance.
New Jersey is the tenth state to have its plan approved in the seven months since CHIP funds became available. The eleventh state, Connecticut, was also approved today. Together, these 11 states anticipate providing health insurance coverage for more than one million currently uninsured children within the next three years.
"In just seven months, we've reached a significant milestone. States are telling us they plan to insure more than one million uninsured children, all thanks to the CHIP program. That's a remarkable achievement," Shalala said. "Many of these children come from working families who play by the rules, but still don't earn enough to afford coverage for their kids. CHIP is bringing healthier lives to America's children, and peace of mind to America's working families."
New Jersey will use its new allocation to create NJKidCare. The program will include an expanded Medicaid population and a new state CHIP plan. The Medicaid expansion will provide comprehensive health care coverage to all children age 6-19 whose families have incomes at or below 133 percent of the federal poverty level (the poverty level is $16,450 a year for a family of four). The state estimates that an additional 34,000 children will be added to the Medicaid program in the first year. The separate state program will be targeted toward children in families with incomes above 133 percent of poverty up to 200 percent of poverty. The new program will charge families above 150 percent of poverty a $15 per month premium and will extend coverage to an estimated 68,000 children in the first year.
"We are pleased that New Jersey is creating a new CHIP program that will provide a brighter future for thousands of children who otherwise would not have had health coverage," said Nancy-Ann Min DeParle, administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), which runs the CHIP, Medicaid and Medicare programs.
CHIP gives states three options for devising a plan to cover uninsured children: designing a new children's health insurance program; expanding current Medicaid programs; or a combination of both strategies. HHS must approve each state's plan before CHIP funds become available.
"With CHIP we're doing more than putting an insurance card into parents' hands," said Claude Earl Fox, M.D., M.P.H., acting administrator of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), the agency working with HCFA and states to implement CHIP. "We're extending a hand to families, helping them enroll in the new program and put their children into high quality, comprehensive health care that will keep them healthy, learning and growing."
For the first year of the program, allotments totaling $4.3 billion are available to states whose plans are approved by HHS by Sept. 30, 1998. In addition to the 11 states which have been approved--Alabama, Colorado, South Carolina, Florida, Ohio, California, Illinois, New York, Michigan, New Jersey and Connecticut--these states and Puerto Rico have submitted plans: Missouri, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada, Vermont, Wisconsin, Texas, Utah, Montana and Indiana.