WASHINGTON—The National Governors Association (NGA) today issued the following statement in support of the House and Senate acting this week to reauthorize the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) for five years:
“Governors have asked Congress to extend the Children’s Health Insurance Program for five years long before Congress allowed it to expire in September. More recently, governors have written bipartisan letters and op-eds. Congress cannot wait any longer to meet their commitment to nearly 9 million children.
In the past week, Virginia and Connecticut have sent notices to more than 68,000 families indicating that the CHIP impasse in Congress will lead to termination of health insurance coverage for their children.
This week, Alabama announced they will freeze enrollments on January 1, 2018 and Connecticut will freeze enrollments on December 23, 2017.
Further exacerbating the crisis, states now expect to suffer significant cuts to their CHIP contingency fund allocation, which will result in a sooner than expected expiration of funding in many states.
Governors’ message to Congress is that states and families are out of time. Congress must act now for the well-being of millions of children.”
