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EDUCATE - NC Health
Choice and Kids' Care
In North Carolina, 264,000 children lack
health care coverage—that is enough children to stretch from Greensboro to
Wilmington holding hands. In an effort to offer health insurance to many of
NC’s uninsured children, the state uses both federal and state funding to
offer North Carolina Health Choice and NC Kids’ Care – two programs that
insure children not eligible for Medicaid coverage.
North Carolina Health Choice is a free or reduced price comprehensive health
care program for children. It is available for families that make too much
money to qualify for Medicaid but too little to afford rising health
insurance premiums. A qualifying family’s monthly income must be equal to or
less than 200% of the federal income limits ($2,934 for a family three).
NC Kids' Care will expand access to affordable health insurance to more
children by providing children in families earning up to 300% of federal
poverty level access to affordable health insurance for children. The
program builds upon the success of NC Health Choice. The NC General Assembly
passed NC Kids’ Care in 2007 and implementation was to begin in June 2008.
However, lack of federal funding and a Center for Medicare and Medicaid
Services (CMS) directive have temporarily stalled the full implementation of
NC Kids’ Care.
For now, advocates are working to ensure
that NC Health Choice receives expansion funding while the state likely
postpones NC Kids' Care to July 2009. Below are reasons for to ensure full
funding of NC Health Choice:
- Health Choice
Provides Affordable Health Insurance to Thousands of NC Children.
- About 120,000
children receive NC Health Choice.
- About 300,000
children are uninsured and of them, about 70,000 are eligible for NC
Health Choice.
- Congress has
Allocated Enough Money Through May 2009.
- When Congress
extended the State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP funds
NC Health Choice) in December 2007, they allocated additional
funding for the 24 states that are expected to run over their base
SCHIP funding allocation, including North Carolina.
- NC DMA projects
that in the worst case scenario NC has adequate federal funding to
keep open NC Health Choice, including the expected 8% growth,
through May, 2009. However, the state must allocate the
additional $10.4m for the program to stay open until May.
- Legislature has
Time To Respond in 2009: The NC General Assembly will be back in
session starting January 2009, so if Congress does not increase SCHIP
funding by the end of the first quarter then our NC legislature has
adequate time to act and start shutting down the program.
- To Freeze Health
Choice is extremely harmful to the program and to children.
- During the last
freeze in 2001, the rolls declined 18% or by 13,000 children in 6
months.
- Even when the
freeze was lifted and enrollment began again, the rolls continued to
decline another 14% over the next 4 months.
- The House and
Governor Easley support the $10.4m expansion of Health Choice and
recommend raising the cap to allow 8% expansion of the program to meet
the predicted need.
(Thanks to our friends at Action For
Children NC for information used in this alert) |
