Guv renews call for Congress to reauthorize funds

Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper on Tuesday renewed his call for Congress to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program, expressing exasperation and bewilderment that funding for the bipartisan children’s health care program had been allowed to expire in the first place.

“How did we get to this point?” Hickenlooper said on a Tuesday afternoon conference call with reporters. “To be honest, no one has explained to me why (it hasn’t been renewed). We know there’s the votes in the Senate, and we know there’s the votes in the House. But it is not coming out of committee.”

The health insurance program known as CHIP, which provides coverage for children and pregnant women whose families make just enough to be above the cutoff for Medicaid, has been around for 20 years — or had been, until Congress allowed federal funding to expire Sept. 30.

There are bills pending in both the U.S. House and Senate to renew CHIP, and there’s bipartisan support for doing so once the differences in the two bills are ironed out. Both of Colorado’s U.S. senators, Democrat Michael Bennet and Republican Cory Gardner, have signed on to one such effort.

But there’s been little visible progress. Congress has been busy with the GOP’s efforts to rewrite the tax code before the end of the year.

Hickenlooper on Tuesday blamed Congress for continually using funding deadlines — such as those for CHIP, the debt ceiling, and budget resolutions that fund the federal government — as bargaining chips in a broader political game.

“Everything’s got to be a political transaction,” the Colorado Democrat said. “The two sides just can’t roll up their sleeves and say, ‘This is a priority.'”

House Republicans this week unveiled a stop-gap measure to push one such funding deadline back another two weeks. It would also provide funding for several states that are set to run out of CHIP money this month, according to The Associated Press. But it falls short of a long-term fix for CHIP, and it would only keep the rest of the government running through Dec. 22.

CHIP costs about $14 billion nationally, with twothirds of that being picked up by the federal government.

More than 75,000 Coloradans receive health care through the program, and state officials say they have enough money to continue it through January. But on Monday, the state Department of Health Care Policy and Financing began sending letters to program recipients, notifying families of its expiration and urging them to begin lining up alternate coverage.

“Congress has got to recognize that anxiety and fear has real costs in people’s lives,” Hickenlooper said. “How many more details are there to hammer out? It’s not like this came out of nowhere.”

Hickenlooper said the state has begun to develop a priority list to decide who would retain coverage if $185 million in annual federal funding isn’t renewed — but likened it to “Sophie’s Choice,” the famous novel and film in which a woman is forced to choose which of her two children would live or die.

“That’s not a position any elected official wants to be in,” Hickenlooper said.