The Kids First Act (S114/HR1668)
Currently, there is legislation in the United States Senate (S114/HR1668) that would provide health insurance for every child 18 and younger in the country.  The benefits of the bill include:

The Benefits

• Comprehensive benefits for nearly every child would be available at birth and barriers to health insurance enrollment would be eliminated.
  
• Parents would have more choices for their children’s medical care.
  
• New initiatives would be offered to communities to reduce lead poisoning, asthma, and other problems.
  
• Early preventative treatments and immunizations will lead to healthier children and lower health costs.

The Problem

• Currently, there are 9,000,000 children under the age of 19 that are uninsured. One out of every 8 children are uninsured while 1 in 5 Hispanic children and 1 in 7 African American children are uninsured. Three-quarters, approximately 6,800,000, of these children are eligible but not enrolled in the medicaid program or the State children's health insurance program (SCHIP). Long-range studies found that 1 in 3 children went without health insurance for all or part of 2002 and 2003.
  
  
• Low-income children are 3 times as likely as children in higher income families to be uninsured. It is estimated that 65 percent of uninsured children have at least 1 parent working full time over the course of the year.
  
  
• It is estimated that 50 percent of all legal immigrant children in families with income that is less than 200 percent of the Federal poverty line are uninsured. In States without programs to cover immigrant children, 57 percent of non-citizen children are uninsured.
  
  
• Children in the Southern and Western parts of the United States were nearly 1.7 times more likely to be uninsured than children in the Northeast. In the Northeast, 9.4 percent of children are uninsured while in the Midwest, 8.3 percent are uninsured. The South's rate of uninsured children is 14.3 percent while the West has an uninsured rate of 13 percent.
  
  
• Children's health care needs are neglected in the United States. One-quarter of young children in the United States are not fully up to date on their basic immunizations. One-third of children with chronic asthma do not get a prescription for the necessary medications to manage the disease.
  
  
• According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, nearly 1/2 of all uninsured children have not had a well-child visit in the past year. One out of every 5 children has problems accessing needed care, and 1 out of every 4 children do not receive annual dental exams. One in 6 uninsured children had a delayed or unmet medical need in the past year. Minority children are less likely to receive proven treatments such as prescription medications to treat chronic disease.
  
  
• There are 7,600,000 young adults between the ages of 19 and 20. In the United States, approximately 28 percent, or 2,100,000 individuals, of this group are uninsured.
  
  
• Chronic illness and disability among children are on the rise. Children most at risk for chronic illness and disability are children who are most likely to be poor and uninsured.

The Bill and the Role of Medicaid and the Child Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP)

At the center of the bill is a plan to offer states fiscal relief in exchange for expansions of coverage to more children. Under the bill, the federal government pays for all Medicaid outreach and coverage costs for children under age 21 with incomes at or below poverty level ($15,670 annual income for a family of 3). In exchange, the state agrees to pay for its share of a SCHIP or Medicaid coverage expansion to children under age 21 with incomes at or below 300% of poverty ($47,010 annual income for a family of 3). By raising the age of a child to include young adults under age 21, this will cover more than 11 million children who are currently uninsured.

It is in states’ economic interest to participate. There are 20 million children enrolled in Medicaid today, for whom the states pay on average half the costs of care. Under this plan, the states would pay nothing those children below poverty, resulting in more than $10 billion in savings to states every year. In addition, the federal government will continue to pay its enhanced matching rate for SCHIP expansions, so it will still only cost states an average of 36 cents on the dollar to pay for the proposed coverage expansions.

Encouraging Family Responsibility

This bill requires parents to insure all children under age 19 and requires proof of their coverage to avoid forfeiting their federal child tax exemption to finance automatic enrollment into the SCHIP program. It also sets forth meaningful policy changes to help families achieve this coverage mandate by:

• Allowing higher income parents the right to buy into the SCHIP program for their children at cost;
• Allowing parents to use the SCHIP subsidy to purchase qualified employer sponsored coverage; and
• Providing tax credits to lower-income parents to maintain coverage affordability. Parents will not be required to spend any more than 5 percent of their adjusted gross income on health care premiums for their children under age 19.

Eliminating Barriers and Expanding Access

In addition to expanding eligibility, there are programmatic barriers that must be removed in order for all children to have access to comprehensive, affordable health care.

Under this bill, states are required to make enrollment simpler, automatic and more continuous. We must find and enroll the nearly 6.8 million children that are eligible for Medicaid or SCHIP coverage but are currently uninsured. Studies indicate that as many as 67 percent of children who were eligible but not enrolled for SCHIP had applied for coverage but were denied due to procedural issues. The Kids First Act will change that.

To save money during tight economic times, states have done everything from cutting outreach and enrollment funds to keep the rolls down, to actually freezing enrollment in their SCHIP programs. They have implemented eligibility cut-backs, required families to re-enroll on a more regular basis, and instituted higher co-payments and premiums as a deterrent to enrollment.

Click below to help spotlight this legislation to provide the best possible care to every child: