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Date: Thursday, March 5, 1998 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Contact: HCFA Press Office (202) 690-6145
HHS Secretary Donna E. Shalala announced today that Florida has won approval of its plan to expand health insurance coverage to thousands of uninsured children.
The program is the result of the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP), 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.
"Approving state plans is a strong step toward this Administration's goal of providing insurance to children who need it," said Secretary Shalala. "Many of these children come from working families whose employers either don't offer coverage for children, or whose insurance is simply too expensive for family budgets."
Florida, which could receive as much as $270 million for fiscal 1998, will expand both its Medicaid program and its existing Healthy Kids program. Currently, Florida covers 800,000 Medicaid children ages 15-19 with family incomes up to 28 percent of the federal poverty level. Coverage for that age group will be expanded to children in families earning up to 100 percent of the federal poverty level.
At the same time, the state's current, comprehensive Healthy Kids program will be expanded. The program is currently available in 20 counties, five have been approved and eight more have applied. With the new CHIP funds, existing counties will expand and new counties can apply to join Healthy Kids. There are no income limits for participation in Healthy Kids, but Florida will use CHIP funds to provide subsidized premiums for children in families at or below 185 percent of poverty. The state currently serves 49,000 children under the program (which is capped at 60,000 this year because of budget constraints). State officials hope to enroll a maximum of 118,725 each year with the new CHIP funds.
Florida, Pennsylvania and New York were the only three states in the nation to be "grandfathered" into the CHIP legislation, designating their existing children's health benefit packages as eligible. Florida's Healthy Kids plan is administered through a gateway.html organization created by the state legislature. Services are delivered through state-licensed managed care plans.
HHS will work with the state to make sure that currently insured children retain their present form of coverage and that CHIP funds are used to expand coverage to uninsured children. Florida has told the federal government that the current proposal is just the beginning. When the state legislature gets underway this month, it will debate further expansions of health insurance coverage for children.
"We are pleased Florida is ready to move ahead in providing health care coverage that is so critical to a bright future for the state's children," said Nancy-Ann Min DeParle, Administrator of the Health Care Financing Administration (HCFA), which runs the CHIP, Medicaid and Medicare programs.
Florida is the fourth state to win approval of its CHIP program, along with Alabama, Colorado and South Carolina. CHIP is a state/federal partnership which gives states new flexibility in designing programs and covering children whose family incomes are higher than traditional Medicaid limits. Under CHIP, states may either cover children in families whose incomes are above the Medicaid eligibility threshold but less than 200 percent of poverty, or within 50 percentage points over the state's current limit for children.
In order for states to receive their share of the $24 billion, their child health plans for extending health insurance to targeted low-income children must be approved by HHS. The program allows states three options: designing a new children's health insurance program; expanding their current Medicaid programs; or a combination of both strategies.
"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 get their children into the high quality, comprehensive health care that will keep them healthy, learning and growing."
For the first year of the program, allotments totaling $4.2 billion are available to states whose plans are approved by HHS by September 30, 1998. In addition to the four states which have been approved, the following states have submitted plans: Missouri, Pennsylvania, New York, California, Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee, Illinois, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Oklahoma, New Jersey and Idaho.
"Securing access to decent health care is among the highest priorities of the President, the First Lady and myself," said Secretary Shalala. "Getting the CHIP program up and running is an important first step toward guaranteeing a healthy future for America's children."