Over 1m US children on brink of losing health insurance
For the first time in the history of the the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) — which has provided healthcare to millions of Americans and helped to drastically reduce the uninsured rate of children since its implementation in 1997 — states may run out of funding.
A lack of funding could result in 1.2 million children losing coverage and becoming uninsured, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute, businessinsider.com wrote.
“These are families making $8, $10, or $12 an hour that don’t have insurance. And they’re going to get letters saying ‘your insurance is canceled,” Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown said during a debate on the Senate floor November 30. “How can we let that happen?” The reauthorization deadline for CHIP passed over two months ago without Congress agreeing to an extension, making it the longest lapse in funding since the program was first introduced.
“The politics are ugly. This should not be a Republican or Democratic issue,” Thousands of hard-up older people in the UK are being given a stark choice: Sign up to a ‘second mortgage’ with the government, or lose some of the financial help you receive.
According to theguardian.com, in a littlenoticed move, the UK government is axing a benefit that has been around since 1948 and has thrown a lifeline to many people on low incomes. ‘Support for mortgage interest’ (SMI) helps financially constrained homeowners with their mortgage payments — some of them might otherwise be at risk of being repossessed. But from April 2018, SMI will no longer be paid as a free benefit. Instead, the government is offering to loan people the money, which will Colorado Lt. Gov. Donna Lynne told Business Insider.
“There’s never been any talk of it not making sense.”
“I feel like there’s a little hostage taking with kids and pregnant women in the middle,” she added.
The only other time Congress failed to reauthorize it was in 2007, when then-president George W. Bush vetoed reauthorization because he believed the Democrats’ proposal to spend billions more on the program would encourage families to leave the private insurance market. After just five days, lawmakers compromised and funding was quickly reissued.
Today’s gap in funding has forced states around the country to rely on leftover funds and emergency government grants to maintain coverage for the millions of people who might otherwise be uninsured. But those temporary funds are quickly disappearing.
“We’re concerned about the cost to the people and the magnitude of the anxiety it is producing,” Lynne said.
“Imagine if you’re a pregnant woman and you’re going to lose your insurance?”
CHIP proponents are holding out hope that something can be done by Christmas. Theoretically, Congress could address the problem by lumping money for CHIP in with an overall funding measure that must be in place by December 22 to avoid a government shutdown.
Such a move would be the quickest way to end concerns US families may have about the future of their coverage, said Tricia Brooks, a healthcare policy expert and former CHIP director for New Hampshire.
“We are guardedly hopeful because unlike all of the other health policy initiatives Congress has tackled this year, CHIP actually has bipartisan agreement in the House and Senate,” Brooks told Business Insider.
“The fact that states had leftover funds and that there was emergency money distributed to states gave Congress the feeling that were wasn’t as much urgency. But that cushion is getting extremely thin. Congress needs to act,” she added. offer the same support — the DWP will carry on making regular payments to the individual’s mortgage lender — but interest will be added every month to the total amount the person owes.
The longer someone has the loan, the more interest they will need to pay back, so those who claim for several years could easily face bills running into thousands of pounds.
This isn’t the same as a normal loan: The mortgage holder does not have to pay it back until the house is eventually sold or transferred to someone else, though they might want to make voluntary repayments if they can afford to. In that sense, it’s like a government-sponsored version of equity release.